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CLE Books: The Shape of Change Lessons

The Shape of Change including Stocks and Flows

By Rob Quaden and Alan Ticotsky with Deb Lyneis

In The Shape of Change, students engage in games and other classroom activities (teamwork, hands-on, learner-centered learning) to explore what changes over time. They draw behavior over time graphs to examine how these things changed, and they relate the patterns of behavior to other changes in their experience.

Step-by-step, students build stock/flow maps explaining each lesson activity. These stock/flow maps are tied directly to students’ earlier behavior over time graphs and to the underlying causal loop structures that drive the changes.

In this manner, students begin to build systems thinking skills – an understanding of how structure creates the behavior we observe all around us.

All of the lessons in these books are available for download below. We find that the layout and the compilation of the lessons book format makes them more useable.

Buy The Shape of Change book

Lesson 1: In and Out Game, including Stocks and Flows
A simple activity that introduces and reinforces the understanding of change over time, including the use of stock/flow diagrams that show why the change happens.
Download Lesson 1: In and Out Game or explore the simulation
Lesson 2: Making Friends, including Stocks and Flows
A non-competitive tagging game, wherein students track the rate of growth of friendship and discover the effect of rates of growth, including showing why change occurs by means of stock/flow diagrams.
Download Lesson 2: Making Friends or explore the simulation
Lesson 3: The Mammoth Game, including Stocks and Flows
Teams of students play a dice and graphing game to track the population growth and decline of a herd of twenty mammoths, including learning why change occurs by means of stock/flow diagrams.
Download Lesson 3: Mammoth Game
Lesson 4: It's Cool, including Stocks and Flows
Students engage in the scientific method as they measure, record, and graph the changing temperature of a cooling cup of boiling water, learning why the change happens with the use of stock/flow diagrams.
Download Lesson 4: It's Cool
Lesson 5: The Infection Game, including Stocks and Flows
Students play a game that simulates the spread of an epidemic. The included Infection Game stock/flow map combines all the elements that were used in the previous lessons. Students apply all that they have learned about behavior over time graphs, stocks and flows, and reinforcing and balancing feedback loops to understand how and why the infection spread among them.
Download Lesson 5: The Infection Game or explore the simulation
Lesson 6: The Tree Game, including Stocks and Flows
Students explore what happens to the number of trees in a forest over time as a forester plants and harvests each year. With the included Stocks and Flows lesson, they gain experience anticipating and observing how a stock changes with different inflow and outflow rates.
Download Lesson 6: The Tree Game or explore the simulation
Lesson 7: The Tree Game Puzzle, including Stocks and Flows
This puzzle is an extension of the Tree Game. After playing the Tree Game, students explore what happens to the number of trees in a forest following a variety of planting and harvesting policies. In the Stocks and Flows lesson, students begin to learn to clarify their thinking, and experience the power of making stock/flow maps.
Download Lesson 7: The Tree Game Puzzle
Lesson 8: The Rainforest Game, including Stocks and Flows
In this simulation game, students act out the lives of trees, following different planting and harvesting policies. Students may be surprised to learn that, while the game seems very active, the stock/flow map of the game is quite basic.
Download Lesson 8: The Rainforest Game
Lesson 9: The Connection Game, including Stocks and Flows
Students play a game in which their movements around the room depend on the movements of other players.
Download Lesson 9: The Connection Game
Lesson 10: Do You Want Fries With That? Learning about Connection Circles, with Stocks and Flows
In this lesson, students use connection circles to examine an article about the health risks associated with rising French fry consumption. As in previous lessons, they identify what is changing and describe how it is changing, but in this lesson they begin to think about why it is changing, as they create feedback loops.
Download Lesson 10: Do You Want Fries With That? Learning about Connection Circles
Lesson 11: Keystone Species in an Ecosystem--Using Connnection Circles to Tell the Story
Students read a chapter from a skillfully written science book and use connection circles to unravel a mystery of nature. In the Stocks and Flows lesson, students will build the stock/flow map from the ground up.
Download Lesson 11: Keystone Species in an Ecosystem--Using Connnection Circles to Tell the Story
The Shape of Change STELLA Models
Download all the STELLA models from the Shape of Change. These models can be used in conjunction with the lessons in the book to foster student learning.
Download The Shape of Change STELLA Models

 

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