Upper Elem School Educators

 Natural Inquirer Lesson Plans

Natural Inquirer is targeted at the middle school reader. To accompany the texts, we've created a many lesson plans to improve the learning experience for students. 

General Lesson Plans

Host a Podcast: Students use graphic organizers to create podcasts or radio broadcasts.

Paragraph by Paragraph: Focus student understanding of the main idea of a paragraph in each section of a Natural Inquirer article through a reading and note-taking process.

Scientific Abstracts: Introduce students to the purpose of scientific abstracts and how to write them.

Questions Only: Use Bloom's Taxonomy and an adaptation of the "questions only" reading strategy to help students read and understand a Natural Inquirer article.

Write A Scientist: Help students with reading comprehension by asking students to read a Natural Inquirer article and write a letter to the scientist to ask for clarification on at least 4 questions.

Summarizer, Predictor, Questioner, Clarifier: Divide students into groups and assign each student a role of either summarizer, predictor, questioner, or clarifier. The students read articles and perform their role to help students understand what they have read.

Venn Diagram: Ask students to compare and contrast two articles using a Venn diagram.

Join the Natural Inquirer Twitter Team: Students become members of the Natural Inquirer Twitter team, assisting Natural Inquirer with teaching others about an article.

THIEVES: Help students dissect and understand each section of scientific articles by becoming THIEVES. As THIEVES, students will think carefully about what they have read, and then they will identify their thinking as "Facts, Questions, or Responses."

The 6 W's: This lesson plan helps students think about what they have read by asking the "6 W's":  Who, What, Where, When, hoW, and Why.

Statements and Observations: Students increase their reading comprehension, summarization, and explanation skills by working in groups to share information about a Natural Inquirer article and assisting with educating others about the article.

Block Graphic: Help students think critically about each section by using a Block Graphic to help organize ideas.

S.C.A.N and R.U.N: A graphic organizer to help kids read and think about a text.

K-W-L Lesson Plan: Students create a chart to write what they know before reading, what they think they will learn from the article, and then what they learned from the article. This lesson plan helps with making inferences and learning misconceptions.

Article Summary: One-page worksheet helps students determine the main idea of the article they read and write a summary of the article.

Summarize and Present: Students work in groups to analyze the Natural Inquirer article research study and give a brief presentation on their findings to their classmates.

Visual Thinking Strategy and Photo Description Strategy: Elicit prior knowledge from students using the Visual Thinking Strategy, then have students reflect on the Natural Inquirer article using the Photo Description Strategy.

Thick and Thin: Student create thin questions (close-ended) to help clarify outstanding questions, as well as thick questions (open-ended) to debate in a persuasive essay.

Storyboard: Students use two graphic organizers to record important points from their article and important points from the group discussion.

Double Entry: Students determine important parts of the text and share questions and comments about selected parts of the text.

Question Cube: Students work together to answer questions about an article generated by rolling the question cube.

Jigsaw Summary: Students are assigned different sections of a Natural Inquirer article and work together to create a summary.

Key Words, Key Phrases: Lead students through an analysis of a Natural Inquirer article starting first with identification of key words and key phrases.

WebQuests: Present students with a question, then give them a guide of internet resources to analyze and answer the question. Below is a list of possible questions and associated internet resource guides.

Write A Newspaper Article: Read a Natural Inquirer article then write a short newspaper article highlighting the research.

Highlighter Students learn how to note important parts of a text by highlighting sentences that help them answer the Reflection Section questions.

Frayer Diagram Use the Frayer Diagram with students to identify and define important words.

Natural Inquirer Scientific Process Module - Lesson Plans for a Year

Table of Contents for Scientific Process Table of contents for Natural Inquirer Scientific Process Module.

Welcome to Natural Inquirer Scientific Process Module Brief overview of all the lessons and a rationale for using them in the classroom.

Natural Inquirer Staff Contact Information Natural Inquirer staff is happy to answer any questions you have regarding the products and the Natural Inquirer Scientific Process Module.

National Science Education Standards Natural Inquirer Scientific Process Module supports some of the National Science Education Standards.

What is the Scientific Process? An introduction to the scientific process and how the scientific process relates to Natural Inquirer.

Unit 1, Lesson 1 - Who Is A Scientist? This lesson provides students with an opportunity to identify and discuss their perceptions of scientists and describe what different scientists do in the USDA Forest Service.

Unit 1, Lesson 2 - What it Means To Be A Scientist? What Is the Scientific Process? After completing this lesson, students will be able to describe the scientific process and what it means to be a scientist.

Unit 1, Lesson 3- The BIG Idea - Thinking About Science and the Environment This lesson introduces students to the "Thinking about Science" and "Thinking about Environment" sections in Natural Inquirer journals.

Unit 2, Lesson 1- Search the Literature and Define the Problem, Part 1 Students will be able to identify a problem and explain how research helps to identify a problem.

Unit 2, Lesson 2- Search the Literature and Define the Problem, Part 2 In this lesson, students will learn to identify and research a science problem.

Unit 2, Lesson 3- Design the Experiment and Answer the Question In this lesson, students will learn how to read and explain information from a scientific article, and will design ways to solve scientific problems.

Unit 2, Lesson 4- Discuss Findings and Implications In this lesson, students will learn to read, analyze, and communicate the important findings in a scientific article.

Unit 2, Lesson 5- Tables, Charts, Graphs, and Maps In this lesson, students will learn how to read and create graphs for a scientific article.

Unit 3, Lesson 1- Review the Scientific Process This lesson provides a review of all the previous lessons on the scientific process.

Unit 3, Lesson 2- Write A Natural Inquirer Article This lesson is the culminating project for the Natural Inquirer Scientific Process Module. In this lesson, students research a science problem and then create their own Natural Inquirer article describing their research.

Natural Inquirer Student Notes Page. A page for students to take notes.

 

*Lesson plans made for a specific Natural Inquirer product can be found on the product's page.