In this unit, students investigate weather, heating, cooling of materials, and the effects of sunlight and shade. They engineer a design solution to prevent a chocolate bar from melting in the warmth of sunlight. They consider the benefits and drawbacks of human-made technology versus natural solutions. 

• Changes of state, heat transfer, conduction, convection, properties of materials, weather vocabulary, observing and record weather data, light and energy from the sun, cloud formations 

This unit has a creativity and critical thinking focus:

• Students evaluate and compare natural solutions and human-made technology for mitigating the effects of sunlight on objects.

• Students engineer a novel solution to a problem related to protecting an object from warming.

Web and Print

• cloud classification

      Other Resources

• Notebooks or loose paper and writing tools; Cups or bowls (for ice cubes)

•  Paper towels (to clean up messes) 

• Sticky notes and dark marker 

• Thermometers 

• Whiteboard and markers/chalkboard and chalk (to record melting methods)

•  Chocolate candy bars (1 for every 2-3 students)

•  Possible materials for building structures 

  • Construction paper of varying colors 

  •  tongue depressors 

  • pipe cleaners

  •  aluminum foil 

  • cheesecloth 

  • large pieces of felt 

  • tray for candy bars (pulp or Styrofoam) 

  • other materials you would like your students to have available 

      Opportunities to adapt, extend, and enrich

• This could be extended by asking students to read and write stories that feature weather, melting, and changes of state, for example, using The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats or The Snowman by Raymond Briggs

•  This mini-unit is based on portions of the two learning sets in a sequence of five learning sets. The remaining learning sets have students engage with texts about weather, and study weather patterns including extreme weather in the area.

•  The remaining learning sets, along with additional STEM project-learning units and related resources can be found at https://sprocket.lucasedresearch.org//. ML-PBL Units were co-developed by the Multiple Literacies in Project-based Learning Project at Michigan State University and the University of Michigan 2018–2020. ML-PBL units are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License and funded by the George Lucas Educational Foundation.

English Version

• https://docs.google.com/document/d/12KPf5D_BRflBA7lZ66o4f0GjAMs_1KT52iaLG53bHis/edit?usp=sharing

Hindi Version

• https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ou-0iCXCnfX6sd5wmoUNdc2PHS37a57b5MlJq2IjVDY/edit?usp=sharing

Gujarati Version

• https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mA3TVuhtqCZ8tuO_z6bH_pa51ZpyHSI73WMhnflcQfA/edit?usp=sharing

Kannada Version

• https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uILHhFFD4ICqPcMmKcSRCVvdRnyFTzveJuOAPgyzqV4/edit?usp=drive_link