1. Warm-Up Question: If you could make a bumper sticker with just the most important information from your reading, what would your bumper sticker say? A PowerPoint slide shows an image of mini-van covered in bumper stickers and prompts students to create their bumper sticker slogans about sound. After a few moments of writing time, Brian elicits a couple of students’ bumper sticker summaries and writes them up on the document camera. 
  2. Modeling How to Have a Discussion About Text: Brian is concerned that students may not really know how to synthesize their ideas together to answer the jigsaw questions – he’s worried that they might just take turns writing answers onto their jigsaw answer sheet without having any discussion – so he models a discussion using one group.
  3. Group Discussions about Readings: Table groups consist of at least three students. Each student became an expert about one facet of a big idea about sound, waves, air, and hearing by reading a section of reading for homework. In class, they work together synthesizing ideas and information from their reading packets to answer a set of questions about sound. While the students discuss the readings, Brian talks with them and eventually brings out Slinky toys to help act out sound waves with low/high pitch and low/high volume.
C:\Documents and Settings\Jessica Thompson\My Documents\My Pictures\Microsoft Clip Organizer\j0431548.pngDiscussion Questions: 1) Brian felt that having the Slinky toys readily available during this lesson was critical for helping to shape student thinking about sound waves. How did Brian & the students use the Slinky toys to help think about sound?  2) What issues of academic language and literacy surface in this lesson? 3) What are some partial understandings that students develop during this lesson? What are some ideas that continue to present challenges for students?