Everyday I'm being challenged more and more on how to become aware of my classroom management skills, how to lesson plan, and how to make my lessons as engaging as possible. This weekend, I planed for a lesson on heat energy and I was quite nervous about it because I had to learn the content myself in order to feel comfortable and confident to teach it.
Here was the lesson plan I created:
Heat Energy Lesson
Students will need to know:
-Heat energy is the flow of energy from a warmer object to a cooler object
-Heat moves easily through metal and does not flow easily through cloth
-When two objects are rubbed together, heat is made.
1. Go over EQ. (What are the basic forms of energy)
-ask what forms of energy we have already learned about and what mechanical energy is.
2. Teacher talk- “Today we are going to be learning about another form of energy, but I’m not going to tell you just yet which type of energy it is. I want you guys to figure it out.”
3. M&M activity: “To learn about this type of energy, Ms. Weber thought you guys might want to learn by using M&Ms. Does that sound like good idea? (YA!!!!) Alright, so in just a minute I’m going to pass out an M&M to each one of you and you are going to place it in your hand and make a fist around the M&M. But, before I do that, I want you to record what you think will happen to the M&M in your science journal (2 minutes), then have students turn and talk with their shoulder partner about what they think will happen to the M&M while it’s in your hand for one minute and why.”
- pass out an M&M to each student and set a timer for 1 minute
-have students open their hand and discuss what happened in a whole class discussion (get a good discussion going about what type of energy this is, why, and what makes us think this way)
4. Have students all feel a “cool”/ “cold” spoon before we go to specials and have them discuss with their shoulder partner what they think will happen to the spoon after it sits outside for a half hour during specials and why? (didn't get to this portion)
5. When the students get back from specials have them draw a picture of what they think happened to the spoon. Have students start drawing silently, then they may discuss quietly with their table what their thoughts are. Have a class discussion about what happened to the spoon. (didn't get to this portion)
-Come up with a class definition of heat energy: get students that heat energy is the flow of energy from a warmer object to a cooler object
Reflection of lesson:
I'm actually extremely satisfied with how much the students were able to comprehend how the M&M activity, demonstrated an example of the transfer of heat energy. They were engaged, discussion how the energy traveled, their observations, and the discussion was very rich. While I was walking around and supporting my students while they were predicting what would happen to the M&M once they had held it in their fists, I noticed about half my students were writing that the M&M would melt and the other half said it would get broken into pieces. I had the students explain why they thought these things would happen as well. I believe some students had the misconceptions during the prediction because I said we would make a tight fist and to them, this probably meant squeeze and smooshing the M&M in the process. But I explained to them that would just gently close our fist to cover the M&M and see what happens. After the students finished their predictions (which I have posted a few below), we started our experiment.
Here was the lesson plan I created:
Heat Energy Lesson
Students will need to know:
-Heat energy is the flow of energy from a warmer object to a cooler object
-Heat moves easily through metal and does not flow easily through cloth
-When two objects are rubbed together, heat is made.
1. Go over EQ. (What are the basic forms of energy)
-ask what forms of energy we have already learned about and what mechanical energy is.
2. Teacher talk- “Today we are going to be learning about another form of energy, but I’m not going to tell you just yet which type of energy it is. I want you guys to figure it out.”
3. M&M activity: “To learn about this type of energy, Ms. Weber thought you guys might want to learn by using M&Ms. Does that sound like good idea? (YA!!!!) Alright, so in just a minute I’m going to pass out an M&M to each one of you and you are going to place it in your hand and make a fist around the M&M. But, before I do that, I want you to record what you think will happen to the M&M in your science journal (2 minutes), then have students turn and talk with their shoulder partner about what they think will happen to the M&M while it’s in your hand for one minute and why.”
- pass out an M&M to each student and set a timer for 1 minute
-have students open their hand and discuss what happened in a whole class discussion (get a good discussion going about what type of energy this is, why, and what makes us think this way)
4. Have students all feel a “cool”/ “cold” spoon before we go to specials and have them discuss with their shoulder partner what they think will happen to the spoon after it sits outside for a half hour during specials and why? (didn't get to this portion)
5. When the students get back from specials have them draw a picture of what they think happened to the spoon. Have students start drawing silently, then they may discuss quietly with their table what their thoughts are. Have a class discussion about what happened to the spoon. (didn't get to this portion)
-Come up with a class definition of heat energy: get students that heat energy is the flow of energy from a warmer object to a cooler object
Reflection of lesson:
I'm actually extremely satisfied with how much the students were able to comprehend how the M&M activity, demonstrated an example of the transfer of heat energy. They were engaged, discussion how the energy traveled, their observations, and the discussion was very rich. While I was walking around and supporting my students while they were predicting what would happen to the M&M once they had held it in their fists, I noticed about half my students were writing that the M&M would melt and the other half said it would get broken into pieces. I had the students explain why they thought these things would happen as well. I believe some students had the misconceptions during the prediction because I said we would make a tight fist and to them, this probably meant squeeze and smooshing the M&M in the process. But I explained to them that would just gently close our fist to cover the M&M and see what happens. After the students finished their predictions (which I have posted a few below), we started our experiment.
As the students clenched the M&M's I posed questions for them to discuss and think about, some of the questions I asked were what type of energy do we think this is? Where do we think the energy is traveling? Which object is warmer and which object is cooler? And after the 4 minutes were up, we had the students opened their fists to find this..
They were saying things such as, "The M&M's melted." or "The colors are on my hand." or "My hand is really hot."After listening to all their observations I asked what type of energy we thought this was and all the students shouted heat energy which I was pleased to hear but questioned why they thought this. Many children recognized that the heat came from their hand and melted the M&M. I explained that traveled is a scientific word and we could say the heat traveled from our hand to the M&M. Once the class discussed what they saw, how the energy traveled and which object we considered the warmer object and which we considered the cooler object, I had them write in their science notebooks again on what happened to the M&M and to explain their thinking. After they wrote in their notebooks, I showed a few under the elmo and then we came up with a class definition of heat energy. I wanted my students to discover this type of energy and it's definition on their own and by exploring and discovering through a hands on activity. We decided what heat energy was and will continue learning about it tomorrow.