Sphero assingment and unit plan

Overview

Subject:

Science

Topic:

Energy and its various forms

Unit Overview:

This unit is planned to teach and emphasise the concept of energy and its various forms such as the energy of motion (kinetic), light, sound, thermal, elastic, nuclear, chemical, magnetic, gravitational, and electrical energy. Students will work through what is energy, how it changes from one form to another, and what are the examples of each type of energy all around us. And to know the law of conservation of energy — energy cannot be created or destroyed but can be changed 

Grade:

4

Unit Duration:

3-4 weeks

Date:

14-11-2019

Stage 1 – Desired Results

Big Ideas

Energy can be converted from one form to another

Core Competencies

First Peoples Principles

· Learning involves patience and time.

· Learning is embedded in memory, history, and story.

Alignment Check:

Are your concepts, unit understandings, transfer goals, and essential questions connected and supportive of your Big Idea?

Curricular Competencies

Content

Students will be skilled at…

Questioning and predicting

· Demonstrate curiosity about the natural world

· Observe objects and events in familiar contexts

· Identify questions about familiar objects and events that can be investigated scientifically

Planning and conducting

· Suggest ways to plan and conduct an inquiry to find answers to their questions

· Consider ethical responsibilities when deciding how to conduct an experiment

· Make observations about living and non-living things in the local environment

· Collect simple data

Processing and analyzing data and information

· Experience and interpret the local environment

· Identify First Peoples perspectives and knowledge as sources of information

· Sort and classify data and information using drawings or provided tables

· Use tables, simple bar graphs, or other formats to represent data and show simple patterns and trends

Students will know that…

· Energy:

· it has various forms

· energy can be described in these ways: the energy of motion (kinetic), light, sound, thermal, elastic, nuclear, chemical, magnetic, gravitational, and electrical 

· energy is conserved

· the law of conservation of energy — energy cannot be created or destroyed but can be changed 

Stage 2 – Evidence: Assessing for Understanding

Assess: Understanding

Summative:

Culminating Performance Task(s) at the end of the unit to show understanding

Formative:

Checkpoints for understanding during the unit

Teachers should consider how assessment should be differentiated to meet students’ diverse needs, interests, and learning styles.

Teachers should consider how formative assessment is ongoing, varied, and central to the instructional learning cycle.

AUTHENTIC PERFORMANCE TASK: Assessing for Understanding

Students will be able to demonstrate their understanding by:

· Unit test with competency-based questions on (ask students to respond to Essential Questions and speak to the Unit Understandings

· GRASPS – building a skill-testing question Goal: To show understanding of energy and its various forms by giving examples Role: I am a grade 3-4 teacher Audience: the students of the class Situation: The students in the class are having a hard time understanding the concept of energy. I know that they enjoy visual explanations and demonstrations, so I need to design activities by demonstrating examples that will help them understand the concept.

Product: Design five skill-testing questions related to the forms of energy that ask for one or two examples of each form. I must also elaborate the questions, showing the process, and provide one or two examples of each form of energy.

OTHER EVIDENCE: Assessing for Knowledge and Skills

Students will show they have acquired Stage 1 knowledge and skills by:

· Diamond papers linked to curricular competencies

· Check-ins

· Teacher observations

Assess: Know & Do

Summative:

Final assessments of knowledge and skill at the end of the unit

Formative:

Checkpoints for students to show their knowledge and skills during

the unit

Teachers should consider how summative assessments should be based on clear criteria and include a variety of ways for students to show demonstrate their learning

Assessment:

This question allows students to make decisions that will impact the safety of the event. Students should be able to understand how one form of energy converts into another form. Students should be able to justify their decisions. Students should be able to apply their knowledge in their daily use appliances.

Students will be able to understand the concept of energy, students can learn how energy changes from one form to another.

Teachers should consider how this ongoing assessment is clear, specific, and timely in order to support student progress

Check-ins

Teacher observation

Homework

Quizzes

Stage 3 – Executing the Learning Plan

These learning events/activities are suggested activities. Some activities may span over several lessons. Teachers should add, revise, and adapt based on the needs of their students, their own personal preferences for resources, and a variety of instructional techniques.

Lesson: 1 Review of key ideas for energy

Activity:

Community walk to collect evidence of energy sources or uses.

Students will work in pairs or small groups to collect evidence of energy sources and energy uses while on a whole class community walk.

Before completing the walk, students will be asked prompting questions such as: What is energy? How do we use energy in our everyday lives? What might we see or hear to provide evidence of the energy being used in the community? What are some possible ways these energy forms might have been harnessed? How might we know how this energy was harnessed?

Students are expected to record as many examples or evidence of energy and how it might be used as possible while on the walk. The examples will be recorded onto index cards during or after the walk-in order for students to be able to organize the different examples of energy forms or uses. Students should be reminded to record one idea per section on the recording sheet to ensure they can organize their observations later in the lesson. Once back in the classroom, students will ensure they have recorded one example/evidence of energy forms or uses on one index card or section of the recording sheet. They are to discuss with their partners what they discovered about the energy use in the community. The recording sheets are to be cut out so that students may organize their ideas with one other group in the next section of the lesson.

To establish where students are at with their understanding of energy asks students to brainstorm what they already know about energy – what is it, where they may have seen them, real-life applications.

Guide students to understand:

What is energy?

· The ability to do work or cause change.

· Work is the application of a force through a distance. (Ask students for examples, such as moving a box across the room, sweeping, etc.)

Force can put the matter into motion or stop it if it is already moving.

Motion is a change in position of an object with time.

To do work, energy is needed.

From where does energy come?

· Natural energy sources: food, water, plants, trees, gravity, sun, fossil fuels, uranium, plutonium

· Ways that humans have harnessed or converted natural energy sources: hydroelectric dams, coal/oil power plants, nuclear power plants, wind turbines, solar panels, etc.

What are the different types of energy? 

· Kinetic energy: electrical, light, thermal, solar, sound, wind, hydro

· Potential energy: chemical, mechanical, nuclear, gravitational

How do we use energy?

· To break down and digest food (in our bodies)

· To heat houses and other buildings

· To illuminate lights

· To power televisions, radios, games, cars

· To run computers and appliances

Summary: students should be able to describe what is energy and its various forms

Lesson 2: Solar Energy: The sun is a powerful resource of energy without which there would be no life on earth. Solar energy simply refers to the energy that we get from the sun that is then converted to thermal or electrical energy.

Evidence of Solar Energy (conduct as a class; 20 minutes)

· Fill two aluminium pans with equal amounts of water.

· Have students take and record the temperatures of the water in both pans.

· Place one pan of water in a sunny location outside.

· Place the other pan of water in a shady location outside.

· Alternative (if no sunshine): After measuring and recording the water temperatures in the two pans of water, place a desk lamp above one pan and set the second pan away from the lamp.

· After 10 minutes (or more, as needed) check the temperature of the water in each pan.

Class discussion: What do you do if you are standing outside on a sunny day and get too hot?

(Possible answers: Get out of the direct rays of the sun by moving to the shade of a tree or going inside.)

Where do you want to stand on a cold day?

(Possible answer: In the sun, to warm up.)

The sun produces solar energy, which comes in the form of light and heat. We observed this as we watched the sun warm up the water in the pan outside. Engineers use solar energy to design heating systems for buildings and water. They also use solar energy with solar panels that convert the sun's energy into electricity.

Activity Embedded Assessment

Class Discussions: As a class, discuss each short demo as described in the Procedure section.

Questions: Which pan is warmer? Why is one pan warmer than the other? Discuss why the sun and heat affect the temperature of the water and how this affects the energy given off by the water. The sun is the greatest form of natural energy and is used every day by people in a variety of ways for a variety of purposes.

Lesson 3: kinetic and potential energy

Kinetic energy, the form of energy that an object or a particle has because of its motion. If work, is done on an object by applying a net force, the object speeds up and thereby gains kinetic energy. Kinetic energy is a property of a moving object or particle and depends not only on its motion but also on its mass. The kind of motion may be a translation (or motion along a path from one place to another), rotatory motion (rotation about an axis), vibratory motion.

The translational kinetic energy of a body is equal to one-half the product of its mass, m, and the square of its velocity, v, or 1/2mv2.

If an object is moving, it has kinetic energy. Usually, when we talk about kinetic energy, we also talk about potential energy. If a car is at the top of a ramp, it has a certain amount of energy because of its position. If you release the car, it will move down the ramp. The gravitational potential energy of the car at the top of the ramp is converted into kinetic energy once the vehicle begins to move.

Evidence of kinetic energy

Make a ramp with any of the material– a box, a board, a piece of cardboard, or any flat surface. For today’s investigation, I made our ramp from a cardboard box

· We chose to test how fast Lightning car will travel down the ramp.

· We have three different versions of Lightning cars – a tiny car, a medium-sized car, and a bigger car

· We chose to test how fast Lightning car will travel down the ramp. We have three different versions of Lightning cars – a tiny car, a medium-sized, and a bigger car

· If the masses {weights} are equal, the car with the highest velocity {speed} would have the highest kinetic energy.

· If the velocities are equal, the car with the greatest mass would have the highest kinetic energy.

Here are more ideas for things to change in the experiment to explore kinetic energy using ramps.

· Change the height of the ramp.

· Change the shape of the objects going down the ramp (a round ball vs. a square block).

· Change the size of the objects but keep the weight the same.

· Change the weight of the objects but keep their size the same (a dump truck filled with different weights down the ramp)

· Change the surface of the ramp (cardboard, paper, wood, metal, plastic, sandpaper, cloth, etc.}

Lesson:4 Potential energy

Potential energy is the inactive (rest) form of energy present in any object. It can also be defined as the energy which is stored in an object due to its position. For example, a ball has maximum potential energy at certain height, and it decreases with the decrease of height. Potential energy can be of various forms like 

· electric potential energy– potential energy in an object due to its charge;

·  gravitational potential energy– potential energy in an object when it is carried vertically at some height; 

· elastic potential energy- potential energy in those objects that can be compressed and stretched; 

· chemical potential energy– potential energy stored in the chemical bonds of a substance.

Let us take the example of gravitational potential energy. As already discussed, an object will have gravitational potential energy if it is held vertically at some height. Or we can simply say that energy present in an object due to its height is called gravitational potential energy. When an object is present at some height, earth’s gravitational force acts on that object to attract it to the earth’s surface, therefore, it is called gravitational potential energy.

The gravitational potential energy in an object can be calculated as-

P.E = mgh

Here;

· ‘m’- the weight of the object

· ‘g’- the gravitational force applied by the earth i.e. 9.8 m/s^2

· ‘h’- the height at which the object is held.

Conversion of potential energy into kinetic energy

The hydroelectric dam is the best example of conversion of potential energy into kinetic energy. Besides the conversion of two energies, one more energy is created called electrical energy because the electricity is produced. The purpose of a hydroelectric dam is to provide a place to convert the potential and kinetic energy of water to electrical energy by using a turbine and generator. Dams act as the place where water is held back and released in a controlled manner through hydraulic turbines, enabling the mechanical energy of the water to be transformed into electrical energy.

Lesson 5: Sound energy

Sound energy is the energy generated by sound vibrations as they travel through the air, water, or any other space. 

Asking two questions from the students about sound energy:

· Can you see sound energy?

· Can you feel sound energy?

Well, let's find out! Everybody stands up! Now shake your hands and head! When something moves backwards and forwards, it is said to vibrate. Can you see your neighbour's body vibrating? Well, the sound is made by vibrations that are generally too fast to see.

Today in an activity, we are going to examine how we can see and feel sound energy

Tuning Fork

1. Hit a tuning fork and place one of its spikes beside a cup of water or ping-pong ball.

2. Discuss what happened to the ping-pong ball. Why did it move?

When we pluck the tuning fork, a sound produces because of the vibrations. Now when we place one end of that vibrating tuning fork beside the cup of water, the water is displaced from its position and starts vibrating. From this activity we can say that the flow of vibrations produces sound.

Resources

Teacher: Unit Reflection

What aspects of the unit went well?

What did students struggle with?

What did you struggle with?

What would you add/revise the next time you taught this unit?

Were there any unintended outcomes?

Were students engaged?