Name: Alexandra Keresztes

Science Lesson Plan Title/Topic: The Strength of Magnets

FOSS E-Book - Natl Energy and Electromagnetism Inv Guide - Background for the Teacher - Pages 154-155

Objectives

Focus Question
Standards

Opportunities to
Learn

At the end of this lesson, the students should be able to:

Explain that magnetism is a force by describing that magnets can pull
(and push) objects.
Demonstrate knowledge of the magnetic field by discussing why more
magnets can pull an object that is farther away.
How does the number of magnets affect the distance that you attract a
paperclip?
Next Generation Science Standards
3-PS2-1 Plan and conduct an investigation collaboratively to produce
data to serve as the basis for evidence, using fair tests in which variables
are controlled and the number of trials considered.
3-PS2-2 Each force acts on one particular object and has both strength
and a direction.
3-PS2-2 Patterns of change can be used to make predictions.
How will you use verbal, written, and physical scaffolds to support all
students learning? How do you differentiate instruction to accommodate
different learning styles of your students?(be specific to your classroom)
Some of the written scaffolds I will use include writing the focus
question down on the SmartBoard and asking the students for help in
picking the important words that we need to know to accomplish the
lesson.
Verbal scaffolds will occur as I am walking around the classroom
asking students questions to make them think more about what they
are doing.
When this group has done science lessons in the past, they are
normally very good. I will have the more jumpy students get
materials from me and bring them back at the end of the lesson. I will
also ask the more calm students in the class to tape their first magnet
down so that the edge lines up with the zero on the centimeter side of
the ruler.
How do you group the class to best engage students in this lesson?
The class has science groups that they normally work with so I plan to
keep students in these groups for the lesson. (The students who do not
have permission slips will be kept altogether in the back of the room
so that they will not be in the video.) I may split the science groups in
half depending how large the groups are.
How have you prepared the materials for distribution prior to this lesson?

Materials

Teacher Science
Knowledge

I will have the materials set up prior to the lesson, rulers will be taped
to desks and the magnets and paperclip will be in a Ziploc (or other
bag) so that each group has the exact same materials.
What method(s) will you use to call the class to attention?
To call the class to attention I will use a clap sequence.
Magnets (still unsure of how many the ones we used in class were
not as strong as I hoped)
Paperclips (1 per group, plus extras that I will hold on to)
Centimeter ruler
Tape (to tape the ruler to the desk)
Pre-created worksheets to use as science notebooks (this class does not
use notebooks, they have packets set up for them)
Beginning at 0:30 seconds, I will end on this clip:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNVv70RmuU0
I may also choose to use the SmartBoard (and Elmo) technology available
to the classroom in order to go through the focus question and identify the
words, and show them the materials we will use. In the event that the
electronics are not working properly, there is a white board available and I
will put the materials up on the whiteboard.
Magnetism is a force (caused by a consistent flow of electrons in an
object)
Permanent magnets used to be made of iron
o Current permanent magnets are made from alloys and ferrite (a
powdered iron oxide) and are stronger and less likely to lose their
magnetism
Strongest permanent magnet for consumers: neodymium magnets (can
be dangerous)
Metals (and their alloys) that stick to magnets:
o Iron (Fe)/Steel if it sticks to a magnet, it is likely iron/steel
o Nickel (Ni)
o Cobalt (Co)
Polarity North and South poles on a magnet
o Attract opposites, repel the same
o The Earth has polarity and a magnetic field
Magnetic field protects us from the harmful effects of the sun
The Earths North Pole is actually magnetically the south pole
Magnets are surrounded by an invisible magnetic field
o Flows from North to South
o Acts through most materials (except iron)

Assessment

Induced magnetism = temporary magnets

As the students are conducting the experiment, I will be walking
around and asking them questions to determine their understanding of
the experiment. I will also check that they are writing down the data.
At the end of the experiment, I will call students back to the rug and
we will discuss what we noticed. I want students to participate in this
discussion to make it as active as possible.
Instructional Procedures

What will you be doing?

Engagement about 5 minutes
I will introduce the focus question by
putting it up on the board, large enough for all
students to see. I will activate prior knowledge
by asking the students to help me identify (and
circle) the important words in the question. I
will clarify the meanings of any trouble words,
introduce them to the materials, and ask
students how they think that we will conduct
the experiment. I will also ask the students for
their opinion on how we can keep track of our
data, guiding them towards a table if they do
not go in that direction on their own.
Active Investigation about 15-20 minutes
During the active investigation, I will be
walking around to the different groups to assist
them with the setup and ask them about what
they are doing. I will ask them a variety of
questions to guide them towards their
understanding of magnetism as a force and of
magnetic fields.

What will the students be doing?

Students will be situated at their desks
within their assigned group so that they are
able to mark the same words that I will be
marking on the board. . Some of the students
will need to get up and move more than others
so, after the engagement I will give them the
opportunity to get the materials from me (and
clean them up at the end) to get them to move
around. I will use questioning to have the
students to identify the key words and help me
figure out how the data will be collected and
how to conduct the experiment.

Students will be conducting the experiment

during this time. They will be able to choose
the number of magnets that they will use for
each test (within reason!) but they will be
limited to one paperclip. The students will
record their data on the chart that we set up
during the engagement portion of the lesson.
On the left side, the students will record the
number of magnets they use and the distance
that the paperclip gets pulled from.
During their investigation I plan to ask students
questions such as:
What have you noticed about the
relationship between the magnet and the
paperclip?
Why do you think that you can pull the

Shared Review/Application about 10 minutes

I plan to collect the group data on the
SmartBoard. We will discuss what we noticed
from the median number and make a prediction
with what would happen for 20, 50 and 100
magnets (not exact but general) which will
ensure that students have understood the
important points of the lesson.
I will also ask students what they use
magnets for in their lives (take a few hands).
We will end on the NanoMag Magnetic
Aquarium Cleaner Demo clip on YouTube
(beginning at about 0:30 link is in the
materials section).

paperclip? What is this called? (Get at

the concept of force)
What happens when you have more
magnets? Why do you think this
happens?
What else do you think that the magnetic
force can do?
What do you think would happen if we
had 20/50/100 magnets?

Students will help me determine the median

by helping me cross out high/low, high/low
until there is only one number left in each row.
They will then tell me what they notice about
that data and hypothesize as to whether the
distance that we can attract a paperclip will
increase or decrease as the number of magnets
increases.
Students will participate in a discussion
about where magnets are used in their life.

Lesson Reflection
Engagement
Asking Focus Questions/Defining Problems
For this section, I feel like I mastered most of the pieces. The students are accustomed to
having the question written down on a worksheet, so I created a worksheet for them with
just the focus question on the left side of the page. In addition to the focus question being
written on their worksheets, I also displayed it up on the SmartBoard and asked for one of
the students to read the focus question aloud. I asked the students to help me pull out
some of the key words and we talked about what they meant as I circled them and wrote
some of the definitions on the board. The students and I planned what we would do and
how we would collect our data using the Elmo projector and then switching it to a slide
on the SmartBoard. I feel like my investigation planning could have gone a little better
than it did. While I definitely feel that we talked it out, we did not fully discuss one of
the variables which I found important: how we would hold the magnets. Although we
briefly talked about it, I could see later on in the lesson that they were testing it multiple
ways and just writing down the number that they found had the highest result.
Prior Knowledge and Everyday Experience
I believe that motivation was established from the moment the students heard that they
would be working with magnets. I do not feel that we brought in any relevant
information about previous life experiences or lessons where they may have used
magnets, but I do not feel that it was necessary to do at the beginning of this lesson.
Instead, we talked about it a little bit at the end of the lesson.
Predictions/Hypothesis
We did not make any predictions in the beginning of this lesson because I felt that they
would all say that more magnets would mean that you could pull the paperclip from
farther away. When I walked around to the groups, I had asked them to make predictions
of what they would get with an even greater number of magnets.
Planning Investigations
Two things that I did not discuss with my class, and which were definitely needed, are
behavior and safety expectations and discussion of scientific practices. There were
certain behaviors that I saw in the classroom which I was surprised by, such as students
arguing over who got to do what part of the experiment. I believe that this could have
been avoided by either assigning some sort of jobs or by asking the students to each try
it one time and take the measurement they found occurred most frequently. We did not
do much of a discussion of scientific practices, however I am not sure whether or not it
was important to this lesson as students seemed to find the design as a whole
straightforward.
I believe that we could have worked more on identifying some variables and why they
should be kept a certain way, but I did not go much into detail of why the variables
needed to be controlled, which is important to their understanding of scientific principles.
We also did not set a clear set of steps for this lesson, but in designing the experiment,
some of the students who chipped in were hinting at steps, and it became more evident
when we set up our data table. Setting up the data table clarified that we would begin
with one magnet and add one magnet at a time until we got up to six magnets.
Data Recording Design

As a class, we determined that a t-chart would be an appropriate method of collecting

data and we determined how many magnets we would be testing whether it would have
been every magnet or 1, 3, and 5 magnets, etc. The students have been using t-charts in
their math lessons, so I did not model how to use them, however I feel that I needed to in
order to help them understand what 1.5cm really means and why it is different than
1.05cm.
Active Investigation
Obtaining Data
Although the students do not use science notebooks in this class, they were recording
their quantitative data on worksheets that I provided to them. For the most part
measurements were accurate, but if I were to do this lesson in the future I would clarify
how to write a half of a centimeter and what 0.5cm really means. This lesson did not
involve qualitative data.
Student-to-Student Engagement
The students in this class worked well with the materials provided. Taping down the
rulers definitely helped them concentrate more on the experiment than on keeping the
ruler in one place although in the future I would put white paper under clear rulers or
use a colored ruler that still had visible numbers. Certain groups were better than others
when it came to solving problems that arose and discussing lesson outcomes (as is
expected), some groups had difficulties determining who got to hold the magnets and
others were more interested in finding out what was magnetic than talking about what
they were doing. I needed to direct student conversations back to the actual experiment
rather than allow them to continue straying further off topic.
Teacher as Facilitator
While I was walking around and asking students some of the questions that I had set up, I
noticed that the students had far less prior knowledge than I was anticipating. I was not
asking the students questions to have them make connections until later on and I ended
up slightly frustrated because of their lack of knowledge on the concepts of magnetism.
As a result, when I talked to the groups, there was one group in particular that I tried to
have making connections and working on sorts of riddles to get them to figure out the
concepts that I wanted them to be aware of instead of using the manipulatives and
modelling their language. From this lesson, I learned that I should not expect students to
know about the concepts that will be a part of the lesson and that it is sometimes better to
start at the beginning and offer more concrete definitions than I did in this lesson.
Considering Evidence
In this lesson, I believe that there were some groups that I was able to question more
because they were actively experimenting. In other groups, I felt as though they were
more interesting in finding what around them was magnetic than doing the actual
experiment, so instead of clarifying their thinking I was assisting them in conducting the
actual experiment. In the groups that I was questioning, I did not always encourage them
to use evidence to support their thinking (even though some did so automatically, others
did not). Also, we did not always go back to the data to support the statements we were
making.
Shared Reflection/Application

Analyzing and Interpreting Data

In their groups, some students were discussing their data, however this practice definitely
was not followed by all of the students who were present. As a class, we put up each
groups data on the board and determined the median of the class data. This was a new
concept to the students, which I did not realize when we first started, so I needed to
clarify what we were trying to find. After determining the median data, we talked as a
class about what we noticed happened to the distance we could pull a paperclip when we
added more magnets. I briefly explained to the class that there was a difference between
0.5 and 0.05, but I did not go into much of an explanation and I should have. We did not
begin with predictions, so comparing our results to predictions was not necessary.
Scaffolding Student Thinking
I do not feel that we had built up enough knowledge on magnetism to have completed a
written activity covering the most important points of this lesson. Before we even got to
talk about the points that I hoped students would get from this lesson, many of the
students were interested in finding out other things that were magnetic and seeing what
else magnets can do. In this scaffolding student thinking portion, I do not feel like I
succeeded in my intentions.
Constructing Explanations and Arguments
As I previously stated, the students did not have much prior knowledge or experience
related to this topic despite my initial beliefs. For this reason, I think we strayed away
from conversation related to this experiment and did not give much evidence when we
were talking about points related to the experiment. Additionally, even though I made
attempts to talk about certain vocabulary-related concepts, I noticed many of the students
looked bored and confused at my attempts which also led me to feeling defeated in
achieving the goals and objectives I had set up in the lesson. Instead, the questions
students were asking me that were not completely related to the experiment prompted
more vocabulary discussion, so I swayed towards those conversations when I saw student
interest peak again.
Application
For the application portion, students were able to talk about certain ways magnets were
used in their lives, but we did not concretely touch upon how this lesson is used in real
life. This is the point where I felt we instead turned our focus towards induced
magnetism. We also made a connection with the YouTube video I showed of how we
can use magnets to clean a fish tank in our home without getting ourselves dirty. I
believe there were some points that tied back to this experiment, but nothing clear enough
to help students understand the purpose I had in doing this lesson.
Next Steps
Developing Lasting Understanding
In order to develop lasting understanding from this lesson, I believe it would need to
occur as the second or third lesson in a unit on magnets. In order for this lesson to be
truly successful, the students need to have some background on force and magnetic field
which I would develop more in lessons before this one. From lessons which build up to
this one and this lesson, I would develop a more concrete understanding by relating this
to how recycling plants use magnetism to separate and sort the materials that come into a
recycling plant.

Using Assessment
I believe that this lesson as a whole was an effective formative assessment because I was
able to successfully determine what my students knew and needed to still work on. I
believe that there was a lot of important information that the students did not have
background with magnetic force and field.
For a summative assessment, I would have the students determine the pattern that occurs
for each magnet that is added and how it changes. From there, I would have them make a
prediction for what would happen when we get 15, 20, and even 50 and 100 magnets. In
having the students do this, I would ask them to write a paragraph encompassing this
information as a part two for the conclusion paragraph.
Improving my STEM Teaching
In order to improve my STEM teaching, I would need to be sure of the content that my
students have before they walk into this lesson. This will partially be solved when I have
a set group of students that I am working with on a daily basis; along with this I believe it
is also important for me to work with the students to deepen their thinking and get them
to ask further questions. In a sense, I feel that this lesson was not as successful as I was
hoping it would be because it was not as in depth as I had originally thought. In order to
improve my STEM teaching I feel like the lesson should have more than one fold in order
to help the students develop their knowledge. I would also use this lesson to build my
next lessons from the questions that the students have because magnets are always
interesting to students. Building experiments from students keeps them engaged and
motivated because they want to be learning more about the topic. The more involved
they are, the more meaning the students will be able to develop, and even elementary
school students should have some control of their learning.