Lesson Plan - Heavy Equipment 

 

Purpose

To teach what heavy equipment is needed to build homes, buildings and other structures.

 

Review Background

• Review names of people who work on buildings.
• Review some of the tools used by the different workers.

 

Importance of this Lesson

This lesson is to teach uses of heavy equipment (machines) that children see regularly. Knowing about this equipment will help students understand how the buildings are started from the ground up.

 

Objectives

At the end of this lesson the learner will demonstrate understandings of what heavy equipment is used for by:

• Recognizing and orally naming the bulldozer, loader, dumptruck, and cement mixer.
• Arranging equipment in order of its usage on a construction site.
• Orally appraising a favorite piece of equipment and discussing their choice.

 

Motivation

• Read the story "HOW A HOUSE IS BUILT", by Gail Gibbons.
• Show pictures of heavy equipment and discuss.
• Show video "Moving Machines" (Available from Scholastic).

 

Activities/Procedures

The teacher will:

• Discuss equipment, listing names of each truck for vocabulary development.
• Discuss the job performed by each piece of heavy equipment.
• Discuss order of use for each truck and how some bring materials, some work on site, and some carry materials away.
• Relate and discuss the work of each truck to everyday life; e.g., for the sidewalks at school the cement from concrete.
• Describe the mixers that were used to make the walkways.
• Have children act-out how to drive dumptruck and to dump dirt; continue with the bulldozed, etc..
• Teach the song "The Machine Song.".
• Have children assemble puzzles of trucks.

 

Other Activities

• In an outdoor sand area, use TONKA trucks or plastic replicas of equipment mentioned in this lesson to simulate the usage of each.
• Invite various speakers in construction to talk with children.
• Provide the speakers with the type of questions children at this level are interested in having answered.
• Invite a speaker to drive to school in a dump truck or cement mixer, this will provide a mini field trip.
• Complete a maze that equipment must drive through to get to the site. (paper and pencil for hand-eye coordination)

 

Materials

• Chalk
• Word Cards
• Art Supplies (scissors, glue, markers, paper)
• Books - See Sources
• Video - "Moving Machines"
• Pictures of Equipment
• Tonka Toys
• Music, teacher-made tape of -- "The Machine Song"
• Pictures for puzzles
• Commercial puzzles
• Plastic machine toys
• New words listed on board on chart
• Laminated puzzles made of cardboard or pictures drawn on plain placemats and cut out.
• Developmental Instructional Display
• Folder Activities
• Puzzles

 

Early Finishers (Enrichment)

• Make a puzzle.
• Complete a folder activity of matching trucks to workers or how truck is used (See Matching in Lesson One).
• Complete a sequential activity identifying the order in which each machine is used on the construction job.

 

Special Needs

• Visual representations of workers should retain prominence in the room.
• Motor and verbal skills will be enhanced as children engage in free play with replicas of the equipment.

 

Closure

At the end of this lesson students will name their favorite machinery and tell how it is used.

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