Basic Information

Changes occur everywhere, and every moment around us. Everything in the world is subject to change. But why and how do things change? Do they all follow the same pattern? Or do different things change differently? What are the different kinds of changes? These are the questions that this lesson seeks to answer.

Lesson plan Details

Duration:

03 hours 00 mins

Introduction:

Change is the only constant in this world and nothing else is. In our everyday life we observe so many changes around us—of night turning into day, of our piping hot breakfast turning cold before we consume it, of fresh flowers in the morning drooping by evening. While these are more immediate changes, there are also changes that take place over a period of time. So how does one teach such a ubiquitous topic? This article tells you how the inductive teaching method can be used to teach about the changes around us. This approach can, in fact, trigger multi-dimensional learning in children.

Objective:

To understand terms like slow change, fast change, reversible change, irreversible change, periodic change, desirable change and undesirable change.
To distinguish one kind of change from another.
To be able to give examples of the various changes discussed.

Steps:

Changes around us

Changes around us is a topic that has a lot of scope to be taught in an interesting manner, especially because change is all around us and children can see different changes occurring. Although they may not yet be able to apply scientific principles to ‘change’, children do know what change is. So why not begin with what they know.

Step 1:

You can start the discussion on this topic by asking children about the changes they have seen.

Have they seen a bud becoming a flower, or night becoming day?

The Inductive Thinking Model has three strategies— concept formation, interpretation of data and application of principles.

Accordingly, begin by building on what the students already know: the various changes occurring around them in their daily lives.

Note for the teacher: Show the children pictures of young and old people and ask them to comment. Display some ice cubes and ask the children to observe. Get a student to stretch a rubber band and ask students to see what happens.

Once the children have made their observations, you can introduce the topic– Changes around us.

Step 2:

Take the topic further by asking students to list five or six changes they have seen around them. Add some more changes not mentioned by the students.

A list of changes

Child becomes man
Plant becomes tree
Seed becomes plant
Burning of paper
Shoes become old
Uniforms become old
Pencils become short
Boiling of water
Night becomes day
Hot becomes cold
Rusting of iron
Ripening of mangoes
Earthquakes
Accidents
Summer season
Fading of wall paint
Milk becoming curd
Stretching of a rubber band
Melting of ice

Now get the children to group these ideas under various headings. Rather than giving them the heads, let them decide the criteria for grouping.

Here is an example of the different groups that can be formed for the above list of changes.

Group A	Small to big
Group B	Becoming bad
Group C	Becoming old
Group D	Change in time
Group E	Change in temperature
Group F	Becoming good
Group G	Happens suddenly

Once the children have grouped their list of changes, ask questions like which changes take more times? Which less? These will be the slow and fast changes. Which changes give us new things? For example, when raw mango becomes ripe, is it possible for us to get back the raw mango? Tell children that such a change is called ‘irreversible change’. In this way, slowly introduce scientific names of the various changes to the children.

Earlier, the children had observed the melting of the ice cubes. Ask them what will happen if you put that same water back in to the freezer. Ice cubes form again. These are therefore, reversible changes.

Step 3:

Now you can show the children pictures of

A young lady and an old lady
A seed and a plant
A raw mango and a ripe one
A burnt piece of paper and a fresh one
A child and a man

Ask the children to write down the type of changes these are. Based on what they have learnt so far, the children will be able to identify the type of change. For the changes that they don’t still identify, you can follow the same method of eliciting the answers from them asking probing questions.

Make a chart with a list of changes and write down the different types of changes there are. Against each item, tick the type of change it is. And together with the children fill up the chart. There are desirable and undesirable changes as well, which you can add to the list. Like milk becoming curd and nails rusting respectively. Changes that happen again and again after a fixed time are called periodic changes, like morning turning into evening or every Monday followed by a Tuesday. Do accidents happen after a fixed time? Do earthquakes and volcanoes occur every few months? Such changes you can point out to the children are non-periodic changes. Add these to the list of types of changes on the chart. (For an example of a chart with the changes and the different types see resources 1 and 2 - Tables 1 and 2).

This lesson first appeared in Teacher Plus, Volume 3, Issue No.2, March-April 2005 and has been adapted here with changes.

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