5-E Instructional Model Lesson Plan

Name: Rachel Hartmann Grade Level: 7th Grade Life Science

Topic: Populations

Topic Explanation: Write a 3-4 sentence paragraph explaining the concept you are teaching. DO
NOT summarize the teaching process (what you are doing in the lesson). This is strictly about the
concept you are teaching.

The concept that I am teaching is birth rate, death rate, fertility rate, and resources and the effects
that each of these have on a population. Students will understand the chance that populations
take on fertility rates and birth rates and how it will increase the population or decrease the
population. I will also be discussing how these effects can also cause problems with future
generations if populations are having too many children or too little children.
STEM Behavior/Skills: (check area(s) that are being emphasized in the lesson):
_X__Collaboration
__X_Asking Questions
____Developing and Using Models
____Defining Problems
____Planning Investigation
__X_Carrying Out Investigation
_X__Analyzing and Interpreting Data
__X_Using Mathematics and Computational Thinking
_X__Constructing Explanations
____Designing Solutions
____Engaging in Argument from Evidence
__X_Obtaining and Evaluating Information
____Other (specify):
__X__Communicating Information
Objectives(s):

Students will be able to calculate the effects of death rate, birth rate, and resources have on a
population.
Materials:

Human Population Game Worksheet (Idea Bank)

Notebook
Pencil
Projector
Chapter 21 Power Point Notes
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khFjdmp9sZk
Engage:
Explain how you will get the students excited and curious about what they are to learn in
this lesson and make connections to previous experiences.

I will engage students by starting out with a few questions to get them thinking about the
topic and help them recall information from the previous lesson. Questions include:
1. What is the approximate world population?
2. How do birth rate and death rate affect population?
3. True or False: Our population is decreasing?
I will give students a few minutes to discuss with their neighbor. I will have a few groups
share what they discussed and we will go through the answers and discuss what we have
learned about population so far.

Explore:
Explain the concrete experience(s) you will provide students as they discover the
concept(s) to be learned in this lesson. Include directions for the activity here.

Next, I will break students into six different groups by walking around the room and
counting students off from one to six. Students will go to a lab station and I will hand
each group an Idea Bank The Human Population Game
http://search.proquest.com/openview/a874eb9fd1da191026a7812820354e21/1?pqorigsite=gscholar&cbl=40590. Each group will also get a die to use during the game,
however, I will wait to hand that out until I explain the directions so students are playing
around with the die while I am trying to explain. I will read the directions to the students
and then go through one round of the game together in order to reduce a lot of confusion.
For the birth rate per fertile person I will assign each group a rate. Group 1: .5, Group
2: 1, Group 3: 1.5, Group 4: 2, Group 5: 2.5, and Group 6: 3. Students will use this birth
rate throughout the game. In order to keep everybody involved and to avoid one person
doing the whole activity for the group, I will make sure that students are taking turns
rolling the dice and after each round I will ask students to change the person who was
writing and let somebody else do the writing.
Explain:
Identify the explanations the students and you are going to share to help students make
sense of their discoveries and questions related to the concept(s) the students are able to
learn in this lesson. Directions for the activity DO NOT go here, they are in the Explore
portion of the lesson.

After the activity we will come back together as a group and discuss what happened in
each of their situations. Students will analyze their chart and share with the group what
exactly happened. We will analyze the differences in the groups as each had a different
birth rate. It should show that those that had the middle fertility rates were able to play
the game a little longer because the population would steadily rise and decline at a slower
pace than other rates. Students should notice that resources can run out very fast if the
population increases so much. I will connect this to what is currently happening in the
world today. Our population is growing so rapid that we are estimated to reach Earths
carrying capacity by 2050. This will show students that we need to take care of the
resources that we have to allow all of these people to survive. Students should also notice
that this game is a lot about chance as students are rolling dice to find out the chance of a
certain situation. This shows that in the real world there isnt always a steady increase or
decrease in population. In some moments in time the population has really increased due
to advances in technology and medicine. Whereas there are also big decreases in
populations because of diseases or natural disasters. You cant always control population
growth and the effects the resources have on population.
Elaborate:
Explain how you are going to give the students an opportunity to further explore the same
concepts to assist them in achieving a fuller and deeper understanding of what they learned
in the explore and explanation phases of the lesson.

We will go back to taking notes on Chapter 21 which will further elaborate on this
subject. We will again review what birth rate and death rate are to further discuss the

effects of each. The Power Point discusses the population change from a thousand years
ago to the estimated population in 2050. It really shows students how fast the population
has changed in just a small amount of years. Then, the notes continue to talk about the
effects of the growing population on the Earth and why the population has increased so
much. The next slide discusses how a population may decrease and also the movement of
people and why people move to different places. The slide also includes a video that
shows the population increase from 1 A.D. to the current time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khFjdmp9sZk. It is interesting to see the effects of
things such as the black plague and the industrial revolution.
Evaluate:
Explain both the formative and summative assessments you will use to assess the students
understanding of the concept(s) for this lesson.

Throughout notes I will facilitate questions to check their understanding of the concept, if
students dont seem to be understanding we will go into more detail on the topic. At the
end of the lesson I will use the 3-2-1- exit slip technique. Students will get three
questions to answer correctly before they can pack up and leave for the day. The
questions include:
1. What is Earths estimated carrying capacity?
2. Name one effect humans have on the Earth good or bad.
3. Name one reason why people move.
This will help me see if students understood the content or if we need to cover the topic
again the next day.

Safety:
Accommodations for Special Needs Students:

There are no special accommodations that need to be made as there are currently no students that
are on an IEP in this classroom.