Lesson Plans

Lesson 1: An Introduction
In this first lesson, students will be asked to record and analyse their thoughts about energy. Students will work co-operatively in groups and engage in a think, pair and share activity culminating in a class discussion about energy.

Lesson 2: Work and Energy
Working in co-operative groups, students will perform a task to calculate how much energy or work they do by running up a flight of stairs. They will be introduced to the International System of Units or SI of Joules and Kilojoules. They will use this knowledge to analyse the energy content of food and drink and evaluate their own food choices.

Lesson 3: Power
Using the experimental data from Lesson 2, students will work co-operatively in groups to calculate power when running up stairs. They will then use this knowledge to calculate their equivalent electrical power in watts and apply this to household appliances.

Lesson 4: Classroom Poster
Students will hand draw, or use PowerPoint to design a poster incorporating all the information on energy they have worked on so far.

Lesson 5: Spool Racer
Working in co-operative groups, students will make a spool racer which will introduce them to kinetic and potential energy.

Lesson 6: Skate Park
In pairs, students will use a computer simulation of a skate board park to learn about kinetic and potential energy.

Lesson 7: Cyber Hunt
In this cyber hunt, students working co-operatively in pairs are asked to locate and record information on energy types and sources.

Lesson 8: Review
In this lesson students, will be asked to review what they have learnt about energy in this module. They will complete a summative assessment and then compare their new understanding of energy with their concept of energy at the beginning of the module.

Further lessons as per the Western Australia: Department of Education and Training(2008), Early adolescence (8-10) science syllabus would include sources of energy, the sun, forces, energy transfer and transformations.

Image : Francesco Marino at FreeDigitalPhotos.net