Free 4th Grade The Way The World Looks Lesson Plan (Math)

Topic: The Way the World Looks

Objectives & Outcomes

• Students will be able to describe and compare the different aspects of our visual experience-sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch-and how they interact with each other.

Materials

• Handouts with examples of each sense (e.g., a bell for sound, a peppermint for taste, a flower for smell, a battery for touch, and a picture of a cat for sight)
• Highlighters or colored pencils

Warm-up

• Begin the lesson by asking students to close their eyes and focus on their sense of touch. Slowly move your hand toward them and ask them to recognize how they can sense your approach based on the slight changes in pressure, temperature, and texture.
• Next, have students turn their attention to their sense of sight. Ask them to look around the room and describe what they see, focusing on the different aspects of each object (size, shape, color, texture, patterns, etc.)
• Continue this pattern, asking students to focus on their sense of sound, smell, and taste, and notice how each sense adds to their understanding of the world around them.

Direct Instruction

• Introduce the concept of the chapter, that the way the world looks is determined by the way it is perceived through our different senses.
• Use the handouts to provide examples of how the same object or scene can appear different depending on the sense being used (e.g. a lemon can appear yellow when viewed through the sense of sight, but bitter when tasted).
• Ask students to share some of their own experiences with how the world looks differently through different senses.

Guided Practice

• Divide students into small groups and give each group a different sense to focus on (e.g. sight, hearing, taste, smell).
• Have each group describe an object or scene to the rest of the class using only the sense they have been focusing on.
• Have students guess what the object or scene is based on the descriptions provided by the group.

Independent Practice

• Have students choose a familiar object or scene and draw a picture of it using only their sense of sight.
• Have students share their drawings with the class and explain how they used only their sense of sight to draw the picture.

Closure

• Review the importance of using all of our senses to learn about the world around us.
• Ask students to share one thing they learned about the world using only their sense of sight during the lesson.

Assess the student's understanding of the lesson by having them complete a worksheet with a variety of questions about using the sense of sight to learn about the world. The worksheet could include questions about different places in the world, different animals, and different objects.