Grade 4
Unit 3: Energy to Change
Essential Question: How Can We USE ENERGY to solve Problems?
Project Description: In the Energy to Change project, 4th grade students think about problems and issues they are facing in their own lives and consider how energy can help. They learn about how energy transfers and can transform, and work in groups to create a Rube Goldberg-inspired chain reaction machine to solve a simple problem. Students will then transfer their experience to brainstorm problems they wish to solve in their community. Through the art of forum theatre, and a community-based engineering approach, students will create action steps towards making a change in their community. By using agency and energy to solve problems, students will inspire dialogue about some of the issues they care about that they would like to see change. Through creating their chain reaction machines and crafting their community change efforts, students’ will spark curiosity about energy, where it comes from, where it goes and how we can use the power of energy to solve problems and change systems.
next generation science standards
Performance Expectations
4-PS3-1. Use evidence to construct an explanation relating the speed of an object to the energy of that object. [Assessment Boundary: Assessment does not include quantitative measures of changes in the speed of an object or on any precise or quantitative definition of energy.]
4-PS3-2. Make observations to provide evidence that energy can be transferred from place to place by sound, light, heat, and electric currents. [Assessment Boundary: Assessment does not include quantitative measurements of energy.]
4-PS3-3. Ask questions and predict outcomes about the changes in energy that occur when objects collide. [Clarification Statement: Emphasis is on the change in the energy due to the change in speed, not on the forces, as objects interact.] [Assessment Boundary: Assessment does not include quantitative measurements of energy.]
4-PS3-4. Apply scientific ideas to design, test, and refine a device that converts energy from one form to another.* [Clarification Statement: Examples of devices could include electric circuits that convert electrical energy into motion energy of a vehicle, light, or sound; and, a passive solar heater that converts light into heat. Examples of constraints could include the materials, cost, or time to design the device.] [Assessment Boundary: Devices should be limited to those that convert motion energy to electric energy or use stored energy to cause motion or produce light or sound.]