20 Questions

By:Tonya Lacy

Unit 1 objective 1: Make specific, detailed observations of an object of study.

My tool is to help make specific, detailed observations of an object of study. My tool is a game of twenty questions. The rules will be a little bit different than the normal twenty questions. The children will have to come up with twenty questions about the object of study that will fit the observations that they want to know.

Artifact

The game of twenty questions is normally the answerer and others are the askers. I did not make up this tool. But I could not find a founder of twenty questions. There is a T.V. show shown across the world and there is an electronic form of this game also. This is a game that I used to play on road trips with my family and friends.

Implementation

1. This tool should be used to teach students between the grades of 2nd and 6th. This tool should be used for the topics of science or in the case of a science fair. Before using this tool students should play the regular game of twenty questions to understand the rules and how it works. The rules and how to play can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty_questions . Students might also need to be introduced to observing an object. For example as a class make observations of a growing plant in the classroom or something along these lines.

2. Prior preparation and necessary materials are minimal. There is not much of anything you will need for students to use this tool. Students will need an object of study. Then they will need paper, pencil, and their critical thinking brains.

3. The step by step procedure to use this tool.

  1. Play twenty questions with your class with the teacher being the answerer. And then have the class get into pairs of two to play. Make sure the students know that lying will defeat the whole fun of the game.
  2. Then move to science. Explain that they are each going to be picking an object of study. This object of study maybe an animal, object, or mineral.
  3. Then ask students how they think that twenty questions would help them learn about that object of study. Students might brain storm things like to know how big the object of study is, what color it is, or what it is used for. These are good ideas and the game can help them find these things, but they need to decide what they want to study about their object of study.
  4. Then have students form twenty questions about their object of study. Normally the questions in twenty questions are answered with yes, no, and maybe. But with their questions they can be answered without doing yes or no. They have to have answers that can apply to observing the object (who, what, when, where, and how).
  5. Then have students find the answers to the questions anyway they think will work. Have them see if the questions answer what they want to learn about their object of study.

      6. Evaluation

      Completeness

      The object is make specific, detailed observations of an object of study. So I think that twenty questions address to all aspects of this objective. It assists student form questions that help the students observe the object of study. With the students doing who, what, when, where, why, and how questions it helps them learn to observe an object. For example if the students object of study is a bear. Then they would answer what a bear eats, or where a bear leaves to observe the bear.

      Effectiveness

      I think that this tool can be very effective to learn this objective. I think it will work better with older students so they can understand the concept of the game better and then apply it to something outside of just the game. I don’t think that this tool is a very diverse tool for students with special needs. For students with needs I might have to change the rules or lower the number of questions to help them apply this to the objective. Students might make misconceptions about playing games to learn things. The students could only see this as a game. It will take some practice to apply it to the objective.

      Cost

      This tool is very cost friendly. There is no need for anything besides paper and pencils that should already be inside the classroom. The only thing that this tool will take is time.