My Senses
Learning Module
- Creator(s):
Humans have five basic senses: touch, sight, hearing, smell and taste. The sensing organs associated with each sense send information to the brain to help us understand and perceive the world around us. Traditional sensory stimulation theory has as its basic premise that effective learning occurs when the senses are stimulated (Laird, 1985).
People of all ages learn best when involved in meaningful experiences. Learning takes place when the mind is able to put together information from all the senses and make a connection with past learning. Using many senses to gain information helps learning to be more meaningful and useful. Children naturally learn with all the senses. From birth, children are experts at learning with all five senses active. They have not learned to select the information from any one sense as more important. They are interested in everything!
A Multisensory Approach to Learning
Taken together, the full range of senses helps students learn material in a more concrete manner. In an article from the Princeton Research, they were able to research studies that show only certain parts of the brain activate during learning; therefore, visual learning will activate a different part of the brain than would olfactory learning. In a report by D.G. Treichler, as cited in the journal “Trends in Cognitive Sciences,” he stated that “People generally remember 10% of what they read, 20% of what they hear, 30% of what they see, and 50% of what they see and hear.” Combining the senses, therefore, is of benefit to students of all learning styles.
In this Guided Inquiry learning module, Kindergarten students will learn about the five senses. They will explore through the use of their senses and will discover that each of our senses collects information. There will be several videos to watch in order to develop an understanding of each sense. To complete each lesson along with the group activities, allow 60-70 minutes per lesson.
These activities are designed to help students understand that peopple get all of their knowledge from thier senses and that is why our senses are so important.
Students will be able to:
The pre-survey will be a simple question to dermine what the children already know about their senses.
To teach this lesson we will be using an application of constructivism learning theory, guided inquiry, but first constructivism needs to be discussed.
Constructivism is a learning theory that emphasizes student angency through self guided exploration, reflection and evolution. "Constructivism is the philosophical and scientific position that knowledge arises through a process of active construction." (Mascolo & Fischer, 2005)
"As long as there were people asking each other questions, we have had constructivist classrooms. Constructivism, the study of learning, is about how we all make sense of our world, and that really hasn’t changed." (Brooks, 1999)
Jonassen (1994) proposed that there are eight characteristics that underline the constructivist learning environments:
Guided inquiry learning is based on research that teaching by telling does not work for most students and students who are part of an interactive community are more likely to be successful.
Guided-inquiry learning is a process by which students “discover” basic concepts through active investigation (Jin & Bierma, 2011).Guided-inquiry, commonly known as POGIL (for Process Oriented Guided-Inquiry Learning), has been shown to significantly increase student comprehension of difficult-to-understand concepts (Jin & Bierma, 2011). Guided-inquiry is an “active learning” technique that focuses on concept understanding. Recent developments in classroom research results suggest that students generally experience improved learning when they are actively engaged in the classroom and when they construct their own knowledge following a learning cycle paradigm (Farrel, S.Moog, & Spence, 1999).”Active learning” techniques are used by educators who recognize that students learn better by “doing” rather than “listening” (Jin & Bierma, 2011)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTMeZ8MvlnA
Pair the kids in group of 2 to 3 and have them talk about what they think their five senses are.
Share with the class what your groups have come up with.
Now that we have talked about what you think our five senses are, let’s go outside for a little walk around the building, pay special attention to what you see, hear, feel and smell so we can talk about it when we get back to the classroom.
Let’s get back into our groups and revisit what we think our five senses are, after our walk, did you come up with different answers?
Watch the video as a class to start off subject.
Discuss and share in large group and discuss and write down the student’s answers on the board.
Tell students that they will be going outside to explore around the building.
Once the students return, place them back into their groups and have them revisit the question of the five senses by describing what they learned on the walk. If students don’t mention the senses then ask questions: Did you smell anything? What did you hear? See? What color is the sky? Did you see any animals?
Discuss how they learn from seeing, smelling, hearing and feeling.
Do you know the parts of the eye?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZH8L3i-qxuE
When you wake up in the morning, what are the first things you see?
Write and illustrate your favorite things to see at home, school and outside.
Let’s do an activity with a partner.
Materials needed: Blindfold
This lesson will introduce the eye, the parts of the eye and what we use our eyes for.
Show video about the eye.
Have a class discussion on what are the first things that the children see when they wake up in the morning.
After your discussion pass out this worksheet and have them work on in class:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0Bz9eBjqfJlfDREQ5VktZN1N4Q0U/edit?usp=sharing
After the worksheet do the class activity:
Do you know the parts of the ear and how we are able to hear?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSO765hyxrc
With a partner, discuss the sounds that you hear when you get up in the morning? What are your favorite sounds and what are some sounds that you don’t like very well? Fill out the chart below with your examples:
| Sounds that you hear when you wake up | Sounds that you don't like to hear |
|---|---|
Let’s discuss what you wrote.
How do our ears help keep us safe? How does our ears let us know when a fire drill is happening at school?
Fire Drills
Let’s do an activity!
Materials needed: Blindfold
Show the video about the ear
Discuss the sounds that students hear, have them think back to the walk, what did they hear? Are all sounds pleasant? Have them give examples of what they heard.
Pass out the chart and have the class work in pairs to fill it out and then discuss the answers.
Talk about the other thing our ears do for us, they don’t just hear sounds, they help keep our balance. The inner ear helps us know if we are standing, sitting, lying down or hanging upside down.
Sounds can help us get away from danger. Ask students to describe the process that they follow when they hear a fire drill.
Activity: Instruct the children to sit in a large circle on the floor. Place a chair in the center of the circle. Choose a student to sit in the chair. That person is “it". Tie a blindfold (the scarf) to cover the student’s eyes. Make sure you ask the child’s permission! Some students will not feel comfortable using the blindfold.
Then point to a student in the circle. That student, “the speaker", then says hello to the child in the chair. The speaker can use a disguised voice or a normal voice. The student in the chair has to guess who is speaking. Allow only 2 or 3 guesses. Give everyone a chance to be “it". Then discuss how it felt to hear things without seeing them.
Did you know that touch is a way that our bodies gather information about the world around us?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QW7SPO8YcAs
With our partners, let’s look at this picture and pretend we are there, make a list of things we would be able to touch.
Let’s talk about what we saw!
Let’s do an activity!
Materials needed: 8 paper bags and items to go into the bag.
Explain what touch is and how the sense of touch is found all over your body. Without the sense of touch you would not feel your feet touch the ground when you walk or feel pain when you are hurt.
Play the video about touch
Show them this picture:
The same pic with ocean and canoes
Have them discuss what they think each item would feel like.
Activity: Fill paper bags with different items. Suggestions could be: seeds, dirt, cooked noodles, sandpaper, popcorn, a sock, and ball or flour. Pass the bags around one at a time and ask the students to guess what is inside.
Let’s watch the video about the nose.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9CpmgTPhu8
How can your nose protect you from danger?
Complete this worksheet and when you are done, we will work with a partner to see how your answers compare with theirs and then we will discuss our answers as a class.
Activity: Smell test
Discussion from activity: Could you tell what the items smelled like? Does the smell remind you of something?
Materials needed: Cotton balls, paper cups, extract such as vanilla, orange, peppermint and lemon.
In this lesson we will learn about the sense of smell. Did you know that out of all our senses our sense of smell is most linked to our memory. Give example of chocolate chip cookies being made, reminds us of a relative baking.
They will learn more about their nose during the video.
Discuss how the nose can protect you from danger by smelling smoke or how some foods smell bad when they can’t be eaten anymore and that smell stops you from taking a bite.
Do this activity- print out copies for class.
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0Bz9eBjqfJlfDLWRibV9KM3U4N2c/edit?usp=sharing
Discuss what they put on their worksheet in class- have them tell what they wrote.
Activity: Place cotton balls in several paper cups. Drop a different extract such as vanilla. Orange, peppermint and lemon into each cup. Let the children smell and identify the odors.
We are going to learn about taste.
Let’s start with a video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvq1eKYmTNQ
What do we taste with?
Let’s learn about our tongue:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hwOL91cjwM
Let’s look at this picture of the tongue:
Do you know what foods would be in each category using the picture?
Activity: Taste test with jelly beans
Watch video about taste and then video about tongue
Discussion on tongue picture: Each area of your tongue helps you detect a specific taste: Sweet, sour, bitter, salty. Different parts of the tongue have small bundles, or taste buds, that perform different jobs. We can only taste four different flavors - sour, salty, bitter and sweet- because the taste buds can only perform those jobs. For example, at the front of the tongue, taste buds mostly taste sweet tastes like sugar and honey. The taste buds at the back of the tongue taste bitter tastes like grapefruit or banana peel. The sour tastes make the sides of your mouth begin to water because the sides of the tongue taste sour tastes like lemons or vinegar. The taste buds for salty tastes are all over the tongue. We can taste salt on every part of the tongue.
Activity using the tongue diagram: Asking what foods would be tasted where on the tongue: Sourpatch candies, peanuts, chocolate cake, broccoli
Activity: Do a taste test experiment using jelly beans. You will need: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3ondZPpW1RRNHhoN0hwS2tlUkk/view
A packet of jelly beans
The jelly bean taste record sheet for each person:
Colored markers to match jelly beans
Water
Pens
Blindfolds
ACTIVITY: Ask your willing taste testers to choose their first jelly bean. Before they taste it ask them to color-in the first jelly bean outline on their record sheet to match their chosen jelly bean. Taste testing time!!! Let them eat their jelly bean and ask them what they think the flavor is. You will find that the flavor they nominate in most cases relates to the color of the jelly bean. Ask your taste testers to write down the flavor in the square next to the colored-in jelly bean on the record sheet. Feel free to discuss the flavors in the group. You might even find that the taste testers disagree on the flavor of the same colored jelly bean. In our experiment the red jelly bean was nominated as ‘raspberry’ by one tester and ‘cherry’ by another. Have all testers to ‘cleanse their palate’ with a drink of water before the next taste test. Repeat steps 2-5 twice, each time with a different colored jelly bean. When all three jelly beans have been taste tested, tie a blindfold around each person’s eyes. Make sure they can’t peek! Collect the record sheets together as this time you will be recording each of the taste tester’s responses in the final blank squares. Start the taste testing again – one jelly bean at a time with a sip of water in between. Be sure to choose the same colored jelly beans as used in the first round of testing. Your taste testers will find it harder this time, because they cannot see their beans before tasting them. It is really interesting watching and listening as they try to figure out their answers. When all jelly beans have been re-tasted and you have recorded their answers, let them take off their blindfolds and read their answers. There is likely to be looks of confusion and disbelief as in most cases they will have chosen a different flavor for the same color. Now is the time to invite discussion about the connection between taste and sight. Ask them whether perhaps they chose a flavor based on the color of the jelly bean.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zgDy2XuZa4
Class activity using all 5 Senses together
Discussion: What does this activity tell you about the way we learn if we use our five senses?
Which foods were the easiest to guess? Why?
Which foods were the hardest to guess? Why?
Take out a piece of paper and a pencil:
At the beginning of this lesson, I had you write down what you thought your five senses were. Now that we have finished this lesson, can you write down what your five senses are?
Do you feel that you understand what each of them do?
Materials:
Pieces of orange, carrot, celery, cantaloupe, grapefruit, potato, apple, pear, banana, with the peel of each cut off; wrap each piece in a piece of paper
Procedures:
1. Do not show the students the food or tell students which foods you are using; tell them that they are to identify each food using only one sense at a time.
2. Blindfold one group of students (about 1/2 of the class) and give them a combination of three wrapped pieces of food (for example, apple, pear, potato) to identify by smell only.
3. After identifying the foods by smell, the children pick out the cards with the names of the foods they guessed, open the packages and check the results.
4. Next, blindfold another group (about of the class) and give them a combination of three wrapped pieces of food to identify by touch only.
5. After identifying the foods by touch, and selecting the appropriate name cards, the children open the packages and check the results.
6. The last group does not wear blindfolds. Give this group the three wrapped pieces of food to identify by touch, smell and appearance. They, too, select the appropriate name cards.
Discussion: Which group of children was able to identify the foods most easily? Why?
If this had been a contest, would it have been fair to award the prize to the last group? Why?
We are going to make a journal of our five senses, it will have a title page and two pages for each of our five senses. I will supply the journal packet. On the 2nd page you will list 6 items that you see with your eyes and on the 3rd page you will draw little pictures of what you see when you look around the classroom. On the 3rd page you will list 6 items that you can hear. On the 4th page you will draw some items that you can hear, example: a dog barking. On the 5th page, you will write down 6 items that have different feels when you touch them. Example: Feathers are soft. On the 6th page you will draw 6 pictures of different things you can touch that won't hurt you. On the 7th page you will write down 6 items that you can smell. On the 8th page you will draw 6 items that smell. On the 9th page, you will write down 6 items that you like to eat for our taste sense. Finally, on the 10th page you will draw 6 items that have a taste.
Make your journal colorful and when we are finished we will show our partner and they will review your work to make sure you have listed all five senses and have drawn each picture to show your senses. They will also check to make sure you have colored your pictures in your book.
Peer Review Rubric:
| 3 Points: Journal neatly done, all pictures colored, Directions followed |
|
2 Points: Journal neatly done, most pictures are colored |
| 3 Points: Journal sloppy, Little to no coloring, Directions weren't followed |
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