Teaching Standard: Common Core State Standard (CCSS4.P.1.2)
Students know that an object that has been electrically charged pulls or pushes on all other charged objects and that this can result in motion. Students know that electrical charges can result in attraction, repulsion or electrical discharge.
--ENGAGE--
To begin the lesson, the teacher will engage students by giving teams a balloon. Students are instructed to blow up their balloons and find a way to get the balloons to stick to the wall.
--EXPLORE--
Students will work with their team to do whatever they can to get the balloon to stick to the wall. The teacher will allow students time to try to get the balloon to stick. Once students have gotten the balloon to stick, they will then take another balloon that is not charged and try to stick it to the charged balloon. Finally, students will try to stick two charged balloons together.
--EXPLAIN--
Students will return to their seats and get on their Chromebooks to access their online science interactive notebook through Google Classroom. (This science interactive notebook is a pre-made, editable, notebook created through Google Slides. The notebook is basically an outline for students to add information, access links, insert photos or videos, and share ideas with peers and/or the teacher. The notebook is completely digital, therefore; it can be accessed on any device, anywhere that has internet access). Once students have logged in, students will type in their explorations with the balloons into the journal section of their interactive notebook.
Following their journal writing page, students will have an interactive notebook page for Static Electricity. The teacher will explain that what they just witnessed together was static electricity. Next, student teams will be instructed to gather information on static electricity by selecting a link from the static electricity page in their interactive notebooks.
Links to articles and videos for students to choose from:
http://www.ducksters.com/science/static_electricity.php
https://unctv.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/phy03.sci.phys.mfe.zsnap/static-electricity-snap-crackle-jump/#.WUgKYvnyvcs
http://www.coolkidfacts.com/static-electricity-for-kids/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fT_LmwnmVNM
After collecting information about static electricity, students will post their information using Padlet <http://padlet.com>. Using this tool, students can benefit from collaboratively collecting various information outside of their personalized interactive notebooks. This way students have access to multitudinous information on static electricity, but can take what they can use to understand the topic back to their interactive notebook. Another great thing about Padlet is that it gives the class one centralized place for all of the collected information found by everyone.
--ELABORATE--
The teacher will then talk through the Padlet posts from students and go on to give a clear explanation of what static electricity is. (Static electricity is an electric charge that is typically created by friction. Friction is created by rubbing two things together. Rubbing the balloon at the beginning of class, to try to make it stick to the wall, was an example of friction. Considering static electricity is released all at once, it has not yet been harnessed for powering anything). The class will also discuss how the experiment at the beginning of the lesson was static electricity and what some other examples are.
--EVALUATE--
Students will complete a quick Google Form that has questions pertaining to static electricity. This is a quick assessment to see how students understand the topic and see where we need to focus tomorrow.
--CLOSURE--
Students will be given time to go back into their science interactive notebooks to add any additional notes to their journal. This is to ensure that they have a clear understanding of static electricity and examples of it.
