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Lesson plan Kindergarten Math

Watering Cans for the Sagebrook School Garden: A Kindergarten Lesson

A 30-minute kindergarten math lesson using watering-can story problems within 10 to practice addition and subtraction and to show why morning watering saves water.

Objectives

  1. Students will act out watering stories with cups and cans to show addition and subtraction.
  2. Students will solve addition and subtraction word problems within 10 about cans of garden water.
  3. Students will explain that watering in the morning means the garden needs fewer cans.

Vocabulary

Key words: watering can, garden, left, in all

Teacher overview

The kindergarten class at Sagebrook Elementary keeps a small vegetable bed beside the building, and the class waters it by hand with a can rather than a hose. Their teacher waters early in the morning, before the sun is high, because more of the water poured at midday evaporates before it soaks down to the roots, so an afternoon watering takes more cans to do the same job. This lesson turns that daily routine into addition and subtraction stories within ten, acted out with real cups before any of the numbers are written down. The difficulty to watch for is that students who are handling cups will often push the two groups together during a taking-away story and then count everything on the tray, so the modeling in the procedure separates the cups that are removed from the cups that stay, and the ten-frame in the support note keeps the two groups apart for students who need it.

Read every story aloud. Students should have cups in their hands for the first several problems rather than only pictures.

Procedure

Hook (4 min): Show the drawing of the garden bed. Explain that the class garden gets its water from a can carried out to the rows, and ask students how they could tell whether the garden had enough water. Take two or three answers.

Direct instruction (8 min): Model the first story with real cups. "On Monday the class filled 4 cans in the morning. Later the class filled 3 more cans. How many cans in all?" Set out four cups, then three more, and count the whole set aloud: seven. Then model a taking-away story: "There were 8 cans of water by the garden. The class poured 5 of them on the beans. How many cans are left?" Remove five cups and count what remains.

Guided practice (10 min): In pairs, students act out two more stories with cups on a tray. Story one: "The class filled 6 cans. Rain watered 2 of the rows on its own, so the class did not need 2 of the cans. How many cans did the class pour?" Story two: "The class poured 5 cans in the morning. On a hot afternoon the same rows would take 6 cans. How many more cans would the afternoon take?" For story two, ask each pair to build both groups and match them cup to cup before answering, then circulate and check that pairs are reporting the leftover cups rather than the number six.

Independent practice (5 min): Read the Student Handout aloud, one question at a time, and let students answer with cups, fingers, or a drawing.

Closure and formative check (3 min): Ask the class one question: "The class filled 7 cans and poured 4 of them. How many cans are left?" Have every student show the answer on their fingers at the same time. If more than a few hands show seven or four, reteach the taking-away move with cups before the next math block.

Watering Cans for the Sagebrook School Garden: A Kindergarten Lesson — Kindergarten Math
Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Student Handout

  1. The class fills 4 cans in the morning. The class fills 3 more cans after lunch. How many cans in all?
  2. There are 8 cans of water by the garden. The class pours 5 cans. How many cans are left?
  3. The garden has 6 rows. Rain waters 2 of those rows. How many rows still need a can?
  4. The class has 9 cans. The class gives 4 cans to the bean bed. How many cans are left?
  5. In the morning the rows take 5 cans. On a hot afternoon the same rows take 6 cans. How many more cans does the afternoon take?
  6. The class saves 3 cans on Monday and 3 cans on Tuesday. How many cans does the class save in all?

From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.

Answer Key
  1. Answer: 7 cans. Start with 4 cans and count on 3 more: 5, 6, 7.
  2. Answer: 3 cans. Start with 8 cups and take 5 away. Count what is left: 1, 2, 3.
  3. Answer: 4 rows. Six rows needed water. Rain took care of 2 of them, so 6 take away 2 leaves 4.
  4. Answer: 5 cans. Nine cups with 4 removed leaves 5 cups.
  5. Answer: 1 can. Line up 5 cups next to 6 cups and match them one to one. One cup in the afternoon row has no partner, so the afternoon takes 1 more can.
  6. Answer: 6 cans. Three cans on Monday and 3 cans on Tuesday make one group of 6 when the two groups are pushed together.

Differentiation

Support

Give these students a ten-frame mat so each can is placed in its own square, which keeps the two groups from sliding together during a taking-away story. Read each story twice and let the student move the cups on the second reading.

Extension

Ask confident students to make up their own watering story for a partner using two numbers that add to no more than ten, then draw the story and write the matching number sentence. Have the partner solve it with cups and check.

ELL supports

Pre-teach fill, pour, left, and in all by acting each one out with a cup and a can while saying the word. Offer the sentence frames "There are ___ cans left" and "The class needs ___ more cans," and accept a correct set of cups pushed forward in place of a spoken answer.

Extensions

Set up a classroom job in which two students water the garden each morning and mark a cup sticker on a chart for every can they pour. At the end of the week, count the stickers together and compare Monday's row with Friday's row to see which of the two days took more water, which gives the class a real set of numbers of its own to compare.