Week 1: Invention boggle

This lesson is designed to introduce students to thinking like inventors and seeing the technological possibilities in common objects around them. Invention Boggle will help students to think like inventors and prepare them to develop their own inventions for Invention Convention.

Learning outcomes

The learner will brainstorm inventive ways to use common objects to solve a problem or to do work.

Teacher planning

Time required

Each individual lesson in this unit requires at least one twenty-minute session. You may wish to repeat this lesson more than once, either consecutively or over a couple of days.

Materials needed

• At least one “mystery bag” per pair of students containing a common object (all pairs should receive the same object or objects)

  Common objects could include paper clips, clothes pins, washers, compasses, scissors, ping pong balls, syringes, tubing, bottle corks, aluminum can tabs, sea shells, etc.

• Plain or scrap paper and pencil for each pair of students
• Optional: Chart paper
• Optional: Sentence strips written for English language learners, each reading
  • It could be a ________.
  • It might be a ________.
  • Could it be a ________?
• Optional: Vowel-consonant chart for English language learners

Pre-activities

1. Review sharing materials in pairs.
2. Review taking turns talking and scribing ideas.

Activities

1. The teacher will assign pairs and then arrange students in groups of no more than six students.
2. The teacher will show students the “mystery bags” containing a mystery object. The teacher will remind students not to open the bags until it is time. Once time is called, each pair will brainstorm as many uses for the mystery object as possible. Students should record their ideas on paper. Pairs will have five minutes to brainstorm.
3. When time is called, each group will score points. Like many other popular games such as Scattergories or Boggle, a pair will only receive a point if no other pair listed that exact idea or a very similar idea. Each pair will read their uses and the group will mark off any uses that are the same as another pair or are extremely similar. Small groups should total how many points were received altogether. The winning group is the one with the most points.
4. After scoring, the teacher will ask students to draw conclusions about how this activity relates to inventions. The teacher will allow students to share ideas with a partner seated near them for one minute. Students will then share ideas with the class. Some conclusions could be:
   • Inventions can be really simple.
   • You can change an invention slightly and have a different invention.
   • You can combine an invention with something else and get a new invention.
5. If using this activity to introduce the Invention Convention unit, the teacher may want to keep a chart of these conclusions for students to refer back to when recording problems and selecting an invention in future lessons.

Assessment

The teacher should informally observe students to see if each student is able to supply at least three uses for each object.

Modifications

• For novice English speakers, students should be allowed to act out their uses for the common objects. For example, if an ELL wants to share that a bottle cork could be a landing pad for a plane, they should be allowed to act out those motions. Novice speakers should be paired with a student content to do the writing.
• For intermediate English speakers, a teacher or peer teacher should model using the sentence strips for sharing ideas. For example, if the student shares that a paper clip could be a diving board, the teacher will model using a sentence strip and say, “It could be a diving board.” The teacher can decide whether it is appropriate for the ELL to use just one sentence strip or interchange all three.
• For advanced English speakers, a teacher can use a chart showing that words beginning with vowels correspond with the article “an,” and words beginning with consonants correspond with the article “a.” Students can then use the chart as a resource to use the correct article when brainstorming uses for the objects.

Comments

• When preparing for Invention Convention repeating this activity three to four times helps students to think like inventors. Repeating the process makes brainstorming improvable problems much easier.
• Once students are proficient at brainstorming uses for common objects, having a tactile object may not be necessary for all students, although it would still be helpful for ELLs.
• Once students are proficient at brainstorming uses for common objects, this lesson can be used as a transition activity in shorter periods of time.