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Lesson 3: Real-Life Algorithms: Plant a Seed

Overview

In this lesson, students will relate the concept of algorithms back to everyday, real-life activities by planting an actual seed. The goal here is to start building the skills to translate real-world situations to online scenarios and vice versa.

Purpose

In this lesson, students will learn that algorithms are everywhere in our daily lives. For example, it is possible to write an algorithm to plant a seed. Instead of giving vague or over-generalized instructions, students will break down a large activity into smaller and more specific commands. From these commands, students must determine a special sequence of instructions that will allow their classmate to plant a seed.

Agenda

Warm Up (10 min)

Main Activity (20 min)

Wrap Up (10 - 20 min)

Assessment (15 min)

Extended Learning

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Objectives

Students will be able to:

  • Decompose large activities into a series of smaller events.
  • Arrange sequential events into their logical order.

Preparation

  • Prepare supplies for planting seeds. You'll need seeds, dirt, and paper cups for each student or group.
  • Print one Real Life Algorithms: Plant a Seed Worksheet for each student.
  • Print one Real Life Algorithms: Plant a Seed Assessment for each student.
  • Make sure each student has a Think Spot Journal.

Links

Heads Up! Please make a copy of any documents you plan to share with students.

For the Teachers

For the Students

Vocabulary

  • Algorithm - A list of steps to finish a task.

Support

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Teaching Guide

Warm Up (10 min)

Vocabulary

This lesson has one vocabulary word that is important to review:

Algorithm - Say it with me: Al-go-ri-thm

A list of steps that you can follow to finish a task

What We Do Daily

  • Ask your students what they did to get ready for school this morning.

    • Write their answers on the board
    • If possible, put numbers next to their responses to indicate the order that they happen
      • If students give responses out of order, have them help you put them in some kind of logical order
      • Point out places where order matters and places where it doesn't

  • Introduce students to the idea that it is possible to create algorithms for the things that we do everyday.

    • Give them a couple of examples, such as making breakfast, tying shoes, and brushing teeth.

  • Let's try doing this with a new and fun activity, like planting a seed!

Main Activity (20 min)

Real-Life Algorithms: Plant a Seed - Worksheet

Lesson Tip

You know your classroom best. As the teacher, decide if you should all do this together, or if students should work in pairs or small groups.

You can use algorithms to help describe things that people do every day. In this activity, we will create an algorithm to help each other plant a seed. Directions:

  • Cut out the steps for planting a seed from Real-Life Algorithms: Plant a Seed - Worksheet.
  • Work together to choose the six correct steps from the nine total options.
  • Glue the six correct steps, in order, onto a separate piece of paper.
  • Trade the finished algorithm with another person or group and let them use it to plant their seed!

Lesson Tip

If deciding on the correct steps seems too difficult for your students, do that piece together as a class before you break up into teams.

Wrap Up (10 - 20 min)

Flash Chat: What did we learn?

  • How many of you were able to follow your classmates' algorithms to plant your seeds?
  • Did the exercise leave anything out?
    • What would you have added to make the algorithm even better?
    • What if the algorithm had been only one step: "Plant the seed"?
      • Would it have been easier or harder?
      • What if it were forty steps?
  • What was your favorite part about that activity?

Journaling

Ask the students to go back to their desks to reflect individually on what they learned. Write a couple of the questions up above on a whiteboard. Ask the students to discuss these in their journal. Sample prompts include:

Journal Prompts:

  • Draw one of the Feeling Faces - Emotion Images that shows how you felt about today's lesson in the corner of your journal page.
  • Draw the seed you planted today.
  • Write the algorithm you used to plant the seed.

Assessment (15 min)

Real-Life Algorithms: Plant a Seed - Assessment

Extended Learning

Use these activities to enhance student learning. They can be used as outside of class activities or other enrichment.

Go Figure

  • Break the class up into teams.
  • Have each team come up with several steps that they can think of to complete a task.
  • Gather teams back together into one big group and have one team share their steps, without letting anyone know what the activity was that they had chosen.
  • Allow the rest of the class to try to guess what activity the algorithm is for.
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Student Instructions

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Student Instructions

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Student Instructions

Standards Alignment

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CSTA K-12 Computer Science Standards (2017)

AP - Algorithms & Programming
  • 1A-AP-08 - Model daily processes by creating and following algorithms (sets of step-by-step instructions) to complete tasks.
  • 1A-AP-09 - Model the way programs store and manipulate data by using numbers or other symbols to represent information.
  • 1A-AP-11 - Decompose (break down) the steps needed to solve a problem into a precise sequence of instructions.

Cross-curricular Opportunities

This list represents opportunities in this lesson to support standards in other content areas.

Common Core English Language Arts Standards

L - Language
  • K.L.6 - Use words and phrases acquired through conversations, reading and being read to, and responding to texts.
SL - Speaking & Listening
  • K.SL.1 - Participate in collaborative conversations with diverse partners about kindergarten topics and texts with peers and adults in small and larger groups.
  • K.SL.2 - Confirm understanding of a text read aloud or information presented orally or through other media by asking and answering questions about key details and requesting clarification if something is not understood.
  • K.SL.5 - Add drawings or other visual displays to descriptions as desired to provide additional detail.

Common Core Math Standards

G - Geometry
  • K.G.1 - Describe objects in the environment using names of shapes, and describe the relative positions of these objects using terms such as above, below, beside, in front of, behind, and next to.
MP - Math Practices
  • MP.1 - Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them
  • MP.2 - Reason abstractly and quantitatively
  • MP.3 - Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others
  • MP.6 - Attend to precision
  • MP.7 - Look for and make use of structure
  • MP.8 - Look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning

Next Generation Science Standards

LS - Life Science
LS1 - From Molecules to Organisms: Structures and Processes
  • K-LS1-1 - Use observations to describe patterns of what plants and animals (including humans) need to survive.