Designing Fourth Grade Lesson Plans: "Why Do Different Tides Occur?"

Every lesson begins with an objective. Teaching without aim will not be fruitful. Before sitting to plan a lesson, a teacher should be clear about the aim and objective of the lesson. She should focus on important aspects of the lesson to be taught. While planing fourth grade lesson plans on "Why do different tides occur?", the teacher should make sure that, at the end of the chapter, the students should be able to answer the following questions:

• What are tides?
• Why do different tides occur?
• What are high tides and low tides?

Following materials may be needed in the class while teaching about tides:

• Computer with Internet access,
• Power point presentations,
• A working model of the arrangement of Moon, Earth and the Sun
• Flash cards,
• Markers, and
• Poster board etc.

It is good to form a base before initiating the actual concept to the class. The teacher should plan the fourth grade lesson plans in such a way that she begins with the sequel of questions that lead to the main topic. The word tides is not very new for the fourth grade students, but the teacher should assess their knowledge before teaching them “why do different tides occur?” She should prepare a series of questions beforehand and mention them in her lesson plan.

In this case some questions that can be used can be

• Do you know what are tides?
• Have you ever seen a tide closely?
• Are you aware about gravity? etc.

The teacher should always use her best skills to announce the topic in the class. The best way is to derive a connection between the answers given by the students in response to the previous questions. This makes the students comfortable about the new topic and develops interest in the new topic.

To introduce the facts on " why do tides occur", a teacher can ask a question like, 'Do you know that there is a relationship between tides, Moon and the Earth's gravity?' Such a question will raise interest about the topic in the students.

The methodology adapted by the teacher is the most vital aspect of any lesson plan. How the teacher will approach and proceed with the lesson, what aids will be utilized and what activities will be conduct in the class, are some important aspect for consideration in a lesson plan.

In order to teach “why do different tides occur?” the teacher should make use of various aids. Other than verbal lecture on the topic, it is important that some videos downloaded from the Internet, can be shown on the computer.

The teacher can use a series of flash cards that depicts the phases of Moon, transition in tides at different times of the day and then at different periods in a month, to explain the topic to the students.

An active teaching cast more impact on the minds of students than monotonous lecturing. The teacher should plan at east one activity that involves the active participation of kids.

The working model of the revolution of Moon around the Earth and Earth around the Sun, can be made with the combined efforts of students, prior to the introduction of the topic of tides in the class. This can be used to explain the different phases of moon and how they produce and affect tides.

For teaching “why do different tides occur?” the teacher can give the students the task of watching a video and preparing a table to note the variation in tides at different times of the day. Here the students can work in pairs. Later, the results can be discussed in class in order to come to a valid conclusion.

The most important feature of fourth grade lesson plans should be the recapitulated and assessed well at the end. It can be in the form of questions or any activity.This is in fact important for all the lessons plans. In this case, the teacher can show them a video clipping about the different positions of the Moon, the Earth and the Sun and can ask the students about the type of tide occurring at that time.

While teaching "Why do different tides occur", a teacher can take help from the following link to explain the process to the class:

http://home.hiwaay.net/~krcool/Astro/moon/moontides/