Energy, Machines, and Motion
Part One: Energy
Lesson 1: Circuit of Inquiries—A Pre-assessment
Working in pairs students will complete a circuit of eight short exploratory inquires. These inquiries will pull out the preconceptions students have about forces, simple machines and energy.
Focus Question: What do you know about energy and forces?
3. Lesson Set-up and Management
EALR 2: Inquiry
Core Content: Questioning and Investigating
6-8 INQA Scientific inquiry involves asking and answering questions and comparing the answer with what scientist already know about the world.
6-8 INQC Collecting, analyzing and displaying data are all essential aspects of all investigations.
Students explore:
- energy can be converted from one form to another
- different forces exist and act on bodies in different ways
- machines help people do work
- unbalanced forces change the motion of an object
- plotting and analyzing graphs of collected data can determine relationships among objects
3. Lesson Set-Up and Management
Materials:
- The materials list in the Teacher’s Edition does not separate the materials into the eight inquiry centers. The first time through you will need to spend some time separating these materials. After you sort them the first time through keep all of the materials for Inquiry One in one large baggie, Inquiry Two in a different bag and so on. This will make subsequent years go by much faster.
- The Teacher’s Edition states that it takes 30-35 minutes for students to finish all the stations. Consider spending more time, around 10 minutes at each station, students can reflect more on the questions on the Student Sheet.
- Invest in 8 Rubbermaid™ tubs. You can put the materials for each of the eight inquiries into separate tubs along with the directions for easy distribution. These tubs can be used in the rest of the lessons for housing materials for each group.
- Use tags to identify each station. Students will then move quickly from one station to the next.
- There will be up to four people at each station at any given time. There are enough materials for students to work in groups of two.
- Inquiry Station 1.3 the hand warmer asks students to use a thermometer to rub their hands to see an increase in heat. If you have probeware that measures heat, students enjoy watching the graphic results of their rubbing.
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Inquiry station 1.5 Transforming Energy, students will rub the shaft of
a motor along a large rubber band. Demonstrate to students they should
lift the motor by the casing and not the wires. The wires can easily
pop off if they are picked up the wrong way
.
Prior to Lesson put both the instruction sheet and materials in the tub along with a sign for the inquiry. Have students rotate through each of the inquiries. Consider planning 10 minutes per station Students will work in pairs of two. Each station should be equipped with two sets of materials. There may be up to four students at each station at any given time.
Student Management:
- These activities are designed to bring out student misconceptions. Design your questions to have students bring out more of their thinking without giving them answers while you are monitoring students at each station.
- One goal of this lesson is to provide students with an engaging way to experience concepts in subsequent lesson. Students naturally want to play with the materials. Make sure however your students write down their thinking on the student sheets. This will serve as a way for students to see how much they have learned as they revisit lessons.
- Some stations take less time than others. If students finish one station early encourage them to revisit their student sheets from other stations to add more details.
- The first two stations will take students a bit longer. As they become more familiar to the pattern students will be able to go through the stations more quickly.
- Consider using a timer as a guide for students to manage their time more effectively at each station.
Writing Support:
- Consider re-writing the questions found on Student Sheet 1 so that questions are on a half sheet of paper at each station. Students can paste these half sheets into their notebooks after they have finished.
Reading Support:
- Most of the reading selections in this unit are placed after the lesson. This is to enrich the students experience with the lesson by giving key information, an applied use of the concepts learned in the lesson, or a historical perspective of what they have learned. Many times readings are given as homework assignments. You will want to think about how to manage these readings.
Math Support:
- Inquiry 1.4 will give students a table of information regarding how far a bowling ball traveled in 5 second intervals. Students are asked to graph this information. This is a pre-assessment; you may have students create different kinds of graphs and answer the questions incorrectly. Be assured that you will teach students graphing skills in Lesson 4 and students will have many opportunities to graph data in subsequent lessons.
Last updated 09/09/2009