Enchanted Learning: Inventors and Inventions

Begin by introducing the topic of inventions by either showing some important inventions or by having students brainstorm and list in groups their top 10 important inventions. You may also use online timelines or slideshows, such as the following:

• Wikipedia Timeline of Historic Inventions
• Livescience Top 10 Inventions that Changed the World
• Famous Scientists and Inventors

Tell students that they are going to practice listening, speaking, and reading to learn about and write and make a presentation about an invention of their choice.

Introduce infinitives of purpose. Using some items in the classroom, ask what the items are used to do and what they were invented to do or not to do.

Distribute the Infinitives of Purpose handout and use it to teach about the forms and for student speaking and writing practice. Go over students' work.

Distribute the Present and Past Passive - Inventions Notetaking. Give students time to answer any questions they may know in Part I. Allow them to compare answers with a classmate and then tell the whole group.

Using the Inventions - Present and Past Passive PowerPoint, provide students with the answers and guide them to take notes on the target grammar form, present and past passive on the first part of the handout.

Explain Part II of the handout.

1. Tell students that they will be working in groups to learn about inventions from the Enchanted Learning Web site.
2. Demonstrate how to use the site, especially how to avoid ads and to use the side navigation menus to browse inventions and inventors by first letter, category, location, and date.
3. Assign or allow groups to choose the inventions they choose to read about, but make sure that there are a variety of topics groups are reading about and taking notes on. Divide students into small groups. These groups will be the home groups. Within these groups, number students 1–3, 4, or 5, depending on how many students there are. All 1s, 2s, 3s, etc., will join together in expert groups.
4. The expert groups will read and take notes about an invention for a jigsaw reading activity, using print-outs of the invention's information from the Web site, or students can work together using the computer. If using one computer per expert group, have students open the Example Web Site (above) and select the invention they have been assigned or have selected.
5. Provide the questions (for example, "What is the invention or discovery? What is its history? Who invented it? When? Where? Why / what is it used for/ what is it used to do?") to the expert groups.

Model for students how to read and take notes and/or answer the questions.

In expert groups, students can write sentences using the target grammar forms (Part IV of the handout) and optionally construct a short summary together for one or more of the inventions they researched, or they can practice orally summarizing what they have read.

Once all expert groups are confident that all the members understand what they have read and can orally summarize the information, reconvene the home groups.

In each home group, the "experts" will share what they learned about one or more inventions. The other members of the group can take notes.

After each member of the home group has shared information about an invention, ask students to share what they learned. Optionally, you can tell students to study their notes and give a short quiz the next day.

• Next, you can have students write a paragraph about an invention or inventor of their choice. You may choose to have students write an opinion piece about the greatest invention ever or the best invention of the past century or millennium (see the note-taking form for an outline for their paragraphs).
• If they need to, they can get more information about the inventions or inventors from Wikipedia or Simple English Wikipedia.
• Guide students in writing a topic sentence identifying the invention or discovery and its inventor with a statement about why they chose that topic, explaining briefly two to four reasons why this invention is important, using transitions between sentences, and using a conclusion.
• Provide feedback on the content of students’ first drafts, and help students correct mechanics on subsequent drafts.

Finally, students can use their paragraphs as a basis for an oral presentation. Distribute the handout An Important Invention Presentation, go over the requirements, and show a model. If you decide to have students make a Google Slideshow as their visual aid, this is a template for copying. There is also a PowerPoint template in the Documents section you can share with them. Sample Google Slideshow.

Enchanted Learning has a Rubric that can be used to provide students with feedback on their work.

Students will be able to conduct short research projects by gathering information from online sources, summarizing information in writing, and delivering oral presentations using visual aids.