Lesson Plan #:AELP-INT0076

Turn on Inventiveness - Potato Possibilities

An Educator's Reference Desk Lesson Plan

Author: Debbie Holm
School or Affiliation: Kessler School, MT
Endorsed by: These lesson plans are the result of the work of the teachers who have attended the Columbia Education Center's Summer Workshop. CEC is a consortium of teachers from 14 western states dedicated to improving the quality of education in the rural, western, United States, and particularly the quality of math and science Education. CEC uses Big Sky Telegraph as the hub of their telecommunications network that allows the participating teachers to stay in contact with their trainers and peers that they have met at the Workshops.

Date: May 1994

Grade Level(s): 4, 5, 6

Subject(s):

Overview: This lesson is designed to "turn on inventiveness" in students and to limber up their creative skills. "Potato Possibilities" has students look at ordinary potatoes and transform them into something totally different. Students practice visualization through a fantasy trip and test their powers of observation by blindly identifying their own potatoes.

Purpose: The purpose of this lesson is to promote creative right hemispheric thinking by incorporating visual thinking, inventive thinking and humor in learning.

Objectives: In order to be creative, students will train themselves to see objects in new ways - they'll use their imaginations to transform the usual into the unusual. After all, inventions are almost never entirely new.

Students will practice picturing things and changes in their minds. This visual process is essential to the invention process.

Students will test their powers of observation through their mental images of potatoes and their sense of touch.

Resources/Materials:

Activities and Procedures: New and Unusual Potatoes The activity sheet that is used for "New and Unusual Potatoes" features four drawings of potatoes - plain, old potatoes. It's the inventive student's responsibility to transform each potato into something very different - something never before thought of in a potato.

Potato Fantasy Trip - This guided fantasy trip gives students practice in visualizing.

  1. While the students close their eyes and concentrate, the teacher reads the following out loud to the class. (The room should be quiet and the reader should pause at each series of dots for 5 seconds.)

    "Close your eyes and relax.... Imagine you are looking at a large white wall.... Try to see a huge brown potato on the wall.... Notice the bumps and dents on the potato.... Now imagine touching its skin - how does it feel?.... Now make the potato become super huge - as big as a bus.... Imagine yourself crawling on the surface of this monster potato.... Take a shovel and dig a tunnel into the potato.... Crawl inside and taste the white potato meat.... Imagine the taste of the raw potato.... Now continue tunneling until you completely bore through to the other side.... Walk away from the potato and look at it once again.... Now make it change. First its shape.... then, its color.... until it is no longer a potato.... Keep in mind what you change it into.... Now come back to this room and open your eyes."

  2. The students should think about their imaginary experiences following the Fantasy Trip. They should write the answers to the following questions:

    • Were you able to picture the huge potato in your mind?
    • How did the raw potato taste?
    • What was it like inside the potato?
    • What did the potato finally change into?
Potato Mixup - The students test their powers of observation. Divide the class into groups of 4 or 5 students per group. Give each student a raw potato to examine as closely as possible to be familiar with every detail. Have each student take a turn in their group trying to identify their own potato when mixed with the others in the group. The identifier needs to be blindfolded while the potatoes are mixed up. Through their mental image of the potato and their sense of touch, see if the students can identify their own potato.

Tying It All Together: Related activities for students to do:

  1. Make a list of as many uses as you can think of for a potato. For example, a potato could be hollowed out to be used as a candy dish. Try to invent something no one else would think up.
  2. Take a raw potato and combine it with other materials to make a model of a new creature. You can use markers or paint to decorate your creature. Accompanying a unit about space, it could resemble a creature from another planet - if you were to let it sprout in the dark.
  3. Complete the worksheet "Absolutely Ridiculous Eating Utensils" after you've reviewed the example. Now choose one of your favorite "Absolutely Ridiculous Eating Utensils" and proceed to create your utensil. Try out your utensil and see if it is functional.