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  • 4th Grade

    Energy

Students who demonstrate understanding can:

Performance Expectations

  1. Make observations to provide evidence that energy can be transferred from place to place by sound, light, heat, and electric currents. 4-PS3-2

    Clarification Statement and Assessment Boundary

A Peformance Expectation (PE) is what a student should be able to do to show mastery of a concept. Some PEs include a Clarification Statement and/or an Assessment Boundary. These can be found by clicking the PE for "More Info." By hovering over a PE, its corresponding pieces from the Science and Engineering Practices, Disciplinary Core Ideas, and Crosscutting Concepts will be highlighted.

By clicking on a specific Science and Engineering Practice, Disciplinary Core Idea, or Crosscutting Concept, you can find out more information on it. By hovering over one you can find its corresponding elements in the PEs.

Planning Curriculum

Common Core State Standards Connections

ELA/Literacy

  • W.4.7 - Conduct short research projects that build knowledge through investigation of different aspects of a topic. (4-PS3-2)
  • W.4.8 - Recall relevant information from experiences or gather relevant information from print and digital sources; take notes and categorize information, and provide a list of sources. (4-PS3-2)

Model Course Mapping

First Time Visitors

Resources & Lesson Plans

  • More resources added each week!
    A team of teacher curators is working to find, review, and vet online resources that support the standards. Check back often, as NSTA continues to add more targeted resources.
  • In this lesson, students use the engineering design process to solve a problem. They have to figure out how to design a device that will enable them to listen to a mystery sound that is being made by a device hidden in an insulated box. Through this ...

  • This YouTube video shows how to create a paper spiral that will spin as a result of heat produced from a lamp using an incandescent bulb. Teachers can use this video to recreate the device and perform a classroom demonst ...

  • This resource provides recipes for conductive and insulating dough that students can use to build squishy circuits. Students learn that a closed circuit is needed in order for electricity to flow from the battery pack to light the bulb. Once the&n ...

  • In this article, author Bill Robertson describes how and why he changed his perspective on teaching energy transformation. This topic can be very challenging for elementary students and for teachers as well. Robertson provides background information ...

  • This web seminar provides an introduction to the Next Generation Science Standards, including the Practices, Disciplinary Core Ideas, and Crosscutting Concepts. The presenters chose lessons in an energy unit to show NGSS in action in a classroom. The ...

  • This engineering lesson is part of An Educators Guide to the Engineering Design Process Grades 3-5 created by NASA to guide students in understanding how humans can be protected from the temperature variations found on the Moon. To understand the cha ...

  • This article from Science and Children provides ideas for using the trade book, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, as a foundation for a lesson on generators. This beautiful book is the inspiring true story of a teenager in Malawi who built a generator ...

  • This lesson is the second in a unit on electricity. It begins with a whole class discussion of a flashlight and how it works. Students are then challenged to light a bulb using a battery and a wire. They use science notebooks to record their progress ...

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  • When I teach sound or first introduce students to the idea of observation using our listening skills, I use two different videos. This is the first one. It is a video where Andrew Shum uses 10 different household objects to create a modern music vide...

  • This is the second video I use when introducing the concept of sound or when I want to give the students practice on using their listening skills. I follow the same method as for the first video where I hide the video and ask the students to guess...

  • Future Goals - Hockey Scholar™ brings science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) concepts to life using the exciting, fast-paced game of hockey. Through immersive real-life simulations, students build their understanding of fundamental STE...

  • From TeachEngineering - Students learn about providing healthcare in a global setting and the importance of wearing protective equipment when treating patients with infectious diseases like Ebola. They learn about biohazard suits, heat transfer throu...

  • This is a set of 12 science posters. They make a good supplement for many Next Generation Science lessons. There is one poster for kinetic energy and one for potential energy. These are the two major categories under which all types of energy fall. T...

  • From TeachEngineering - Students use potatoes to light an LED clock (or light bulb) as they learn how a battery works in a simple circuit and how chemical energy changes to electrical energy. As they learn more about electrical energy, they better un...

  • From TeachEngineering - That heat flows from hot to cold is an unavoidable truth of life. People have put a lot of effort into stopping this natural physical behavior, however all they have been able to do is slow the process. Student teams investiga...

  • From TeachEngineering - Through a teacher demonstration using water, heat and food coloring, students see how convection moves the energy of the Sun from its core outwards. Students learn about the three different modes of heat transfer—convection, c...

  • From TeachEngineering - In this activity, students learn how engineers use solar energy to heat buildings by investigating the thermal storage properties of some common materials: sand, salt, water and shredded paper. Students then evaluate the usefu...

  • Part of 4th grade energy unit. I adapted the typical lesson structure to give it an engineering feel and allow students to apply the engineering design process we've been using in STEM class. For the exit ticket, I showed them a desk lamp plugged int...

  • From TeachEngineering - In the everyday electrical devices we use — calculators, remote controls and cell phones — a voltage source such as a battery is required to close the circuit and operate the device. In this hands-on activity, students use bat...

  • From TeachEngineering - Students explore how sound waves move through liquids, solids and gases in a series of simple sound energy experiments. Understanding the properties of sound and how sound waves travel helps engineers determine the best room s...

  • From TeachEngineering - To further their understanding of sound energy, students identify the different pitches and frequencies created by a vibrating ruler and a straw kazoo. They create high- and low-pitch sound waves.

  • Scientists and Engineers are Diligent

  • Scientists and Engineers are Inspired

  • Scientists and Engineers are Thinkers

  • Developing and Using Models

  • Scientists and Engineers are Imaginative

  • Scientists and Engineers are Patient

  • Scientists and Engineers are Visionary

  • Scientists and Engineers are Creative

  • Scientists and Engineers are Fearless

  • Scientists and Engineers are Risk Takers

Planning Curriculum gives connections to other areas of study for easier curriculum creation.