UNLV/Department of Teaching & Learning

Elementary Lesson Plan

UNLV Student: Paola Velasco PSMT Name: Shannon Lively

Lesson Plan Title: PHET Simulations Lesson Plan Topic: Static Electricity

Date: 11/2/18 Estimated Time: 50 minutes

Grade Level: 5th School Site: Vanderburg

1. State Standard(s):

NGSS.5-PS1-1: Develop a model to describe that matter is made of particles too small to be seen.

CSSS. RI.5.7 Draw on information from multiple print or digital sources, demonstrating the ability to
locate an answer to a question quickly or to solve a problem efficiently.

2. Teaching Model(s):
Direct Teaching, Computer Simulations

3. Objective(s):

Students will demonstrate how similarly charged particles (proton-proton and electron-electron) repel
each other while oppositely charged particles (proton-electron) attract each other and how electrons
are transferred between two atoms using science simulations.

4. Materials and Technology Resources:

Swinging Cereal Demonstration (for teacher only)
 1 Cheerio’s cereal piece tied on a 12 inch string
 1 balloon
 Static Electricity Article
 1 chromebook per student running PHET Simulation
 1 chromebook per two students if technology is acting up
5. Instructional Procedures:

a. Motivation/Engagement (Scripted):
 Have “Swinging Cereal” experiment set up at front of class. Students will be interested to
see what cereal has to do with science and will already be engaged in the lesson to find out
more.
Hook: “Class Class Class!”

 The first thing I’m going to do is charge this balloon by rubbing it against my hair.
 Rub balloon in hair or sweater.
 Now, I’m going to slowly bring the balloon near the cereal. I want you to observe what happens.
 Slowly bring balloon near cereal.
 Right, the cereal is moving towards the balloon.
 Something is happening with the charges on the balloon and on the cereal. Today, we’re going
to explore charges through the use of different materials.

b. Developmental Activities or Learning Experiences:

 Read Static Charge Passage “Opposites Attract”

 Lemov Technique 23: Control the Game : Ask students to read aloud frequently, but manage
the process to ensure expressiveness, accountability, and engagement.

o Before reading, discuss vocabulary and how it associates to my cereal demonstration.

 Neutral: having no electrical charge
 Friction: the force that keeps two things from moving smoothly against each
other
 Repel: to force away or drive apart
 Exposed: left without protection or cover
 Charge: a property of matter that causes it to experience a force when near
electrically charged matter. There are two types of charge positive and negative.
 Electricity: the movement of electric charge
 Static Electricity: build up of charge on the surface of an object

Pre-requisite vocabulary:
 Proton: a particle of positive charge located in the nucleus of an atom
 Neutron: a particle with no charge located in the nucleus of an atom
 Electron: a particle of negative charge located outside the nucleus of an atom

 Call on students using ping pong balls to read one paragraph each.
o After reading, discuss passage
o Explain to students that they will be simulating static electricity on the computers

 Have groups one by one go up to the computer cart and retrieve a chromebook
  Model on the projector how to access simulations
 Google  PHET Simulations Physics  Balloons and Static Electricity  Play
Button
 Give students five to eight minutes to explore and just play around with the
simulation.
 Ask students to jot down notes in science notebooks about what they
notice from the simulations
 Regather students with “Eyes Up!” and all students should stop what they are
doing and look at the speaker.

 Lemov Technique 43: Turn and Talk :Encourage students to better formulate their
thoughts by including short, contained pair discussions-but make sure to design them
for maximum efficiency and accountability.
 Ask students to “Think Pair Share” and discuss the following questions:
 How can you make the balloon stick to the sweater?
What makes it stick weakly versus strongly?
How do the plus or minus symbols help you decide whether something attracts or
repels?

c. Closure:

 Debrief and have an open discussion. Prompting questions:

1. What happens to the electrons (minus signs) on the wool sweater as you put the balloon near
it?
2. Are the electrons transferred or just attracted? Why do you think this is the case?
3. What happens when you release the balloon?
4. Would a charged balloon be attracted to a neutral surface like the wall? Why or why not?
5. If the space of the simulation was increased, what would happen between the wall and the
balloon?

 Collect Chromebooks with aid from technology manager

d. Contingency Plan
 If technology issues arise, model the computer simulations to the whole class on the
projector. Students can observe what is happening and answer questions based on their
observations.
 Students can share chromebooks if technology issues are prevalent.
 I will have balloons in the classroom ready for students to perform the experiment with
balloons rather than on the computer simulations
Extension:
  Electric Field Hockey Simulation and Questions

1. When you pull clothes out of the dryer, sometimes they stick together.
What do you think might explain why they stick?

2. What do you think happens in the dryer that makes the clothes stick together?

3. The pictures below show positive and negative circles.

The negatives are stuck in place, but the positive is free to move:

A B C

a. For each picture above, draw arrows on the positive circle ( ) to show which way you
think it will move.

b. In which picture below, do you think the positive circle would go the fastest? (Circle your
answer)

A B C
6. Accommodations, Modifications and Differentiations for Diverse Learners:

 Students who have trouble with technology (either behaviorally or developmentally) will
be placed in small groups with classmates or with the resource teacher
Modifications for IEP:
 Teacher will highlight and annotate scientific text to aid in reading comprehension
 Allow the student to take notes, highlight, or write in the text,
 Have students draw images from text ƒ
 Provide self-monitoring checklists for comprehension ƒ
 Use simple written instructions, or provide visuals for how to navigate website simulation

7. Assessment and Evaluation of Learning:

 a. Formative:
“Opposites Attract” passage will have reading comprehensions to go along with it. Students will
answer the reading comprehension questions and be formatively assessed on their comprehension of
the article.
 Assess students’ responses during discussion time
 Students will turn in their observation notes to be used as an assessment tool on how
they handle the use of technology and if they are making appropriate observations to
meet the standards.

b. Summative: None

8. Homework Assignment: None

9. Reflection
Strengths:

Although we do have a class set of Chromebooks, students are not used to using them for anything
other than Moby Math or CoolMathGames.com. I knew that these Chromebooks were an asset to our
classroom and I wanted to use them to their maximum potential. I took the normal science lesson that
my mentor teacher would deliver, but I made it a little bit more meaningful and engaging by
incorporating technology. Students were very successful in our discussion and were able to apply their
knowledge of static electricity to an alternate medium such as a computer simulation. This activity also
opened up the ability for our class to use more computer simulations as offered through this PHET
resource. Students now know how to access this website and negotiate the different simulations. At the
same time, I also now have this resource in my toolbelt that I can bring to the classroom through any
science lesson because this website has a plethora of elementary friendly simulations. Simulations are a
quick and cost efficient way to bring science into the classroom!

Concerns:

The only concern that I have with using technology with 41 students is that technology comes with a lot
of whining! Although we have a class set of chromebooks, they are getting old. Therefore, so many
students had internet and connectivity issues. This took a lot of time out of the lesson because students
were just sitting there waiting for their web page to load up. Not only that, but when they finally loaded
up the simulation, it kept glitching out and producing weird pixelating images on the screen. This took
away from the activity for some students because they were caught up on all of the technology issues
and couldn’t look past it. This is where the contingency plan came into play and I eventually ended up
just modeling the simulation for the whole class because the technology issues started to become
classroom management issues. In the future, I will probably have to find the Chromebooks that work the
best and use them in small groups rather than individually.
Insights: I translated this lesson from a technology resource I learned in my Science Methods class. I feel
very excited that I was able to translate something from my UNLV classes into my practicum classroom. I
am very lucky to teach Upper Elementary because it gives me the opportunity to engage in some higher
level lessons. I also was excited to introduce technology In my lessons because usually, students in this
classroom would just read the article that I included in my lesson. In the future, I want to continue to
use more technology because it is a resource that we have available that is definitely under-used.
However, having a backup plan with technology is extremely necessary because this lesson was one
second away from being a train wreck. Thankfully, I had enough other activities planned that the
technology issue did not make the whole lesson crash and burn. I feel great about this lesson and that it
helped my students reach their maximum learning and also helped them meet the standards. I am going
to continue to use these PHET simulations, whether whole group or small group, because it is a resource
that I have made available to my students and that they can continue to use for Science.