Energy is one of the most complex standards in upper elementary. Students are expected to learn about kinetic and potential energy, explain how collisions work, and how energy transfers in real-life observations. It can be difficult for some students to understand, but it can also be tricky for teachers to teach, especially if we don’t have a lot of background knowledge on it.
Today I am sharing my favorite strategies and stem activities to teach the energy unit, particularly for the NGSS 4th grade standards. You can use it in addition to your school’s curriculum or alongside my Energy unit. Each of these activities will have printables that you can access for your students and are completely easy to use.
My favorite ways of teaching energy will help break down the energy unit in a simple way and make learning (and teaching) more fun! You can also check out this post for free Energy lesson presentations and this post for all of the picture books I use for the energy lessons.
The strategies and stem activities are a mix of hands-on learning and fun review activities that everyone will enjoy.
Real Life Angry Birds
This is an activity that my stem team came up with during our first year of teaching energy. We mimicked the children’s game Angry Birds into a real-life version played outside. There would be 4 students in a group, and the students would each have a role.
For this activity, each group would need 6 plastic cups, a stretchy band about 2-3 feet in length, and a very soft and squishy ball/round object.
Two students would stretch out the stretchy band, one student would stand in the bag putting the round object in the “slingshot,” and there would be a student about 5-6 yards away with the plastic cups set up in a triangle.
Then, the student with the object would slingshot the object and try to get the object to knock down the triangle cups. As the “Angry Bird” object is flying up in the air, the students are shouting “potential, potential, potential,” and as the object falls down, they start yelling, “kinetic, kinetic, kinetic.”
It’s such a fun initial activity to play so that the students get some outdoor learning. This game creates a lot of buy-in for your class.
To incorporate math into this activity, you can have students measure the distance the object was thrown, and the students can average how far each of the students was able to throw.
In this Youtube video I created, you can view the transfer of energy lesson that you can review for yourself, share with your students, or send to families to learn more about the transfer of energy.
Energy Pendulum Lab
Use it in your classroom as a demonstration! It can even be used as a science center or done in small groups. Most importantly, students will know that a pendulum is at its highest potential when it is raised up high. Once completed, they should describe how the pendulum’s energy converts from potential to kinetic, and vice versa. Students should also understand that the highest the potential energy, the faster the rate of speed will be.
For this activity, you will need the following items:
- Pendulum: You can purchase one for the whole class as a demonstration you lead them in. If you wanted, you could have a pendulum per group.
- Timer (tablet, stopwatch)
- Slow Motion App on Tablet or Chromebook
- Student Lab Report printed
You can break up your class into groups of 4 students. Your students will have the jobs: timer, base holder, pendulum releaser, and swing counter.
Then, the students work through different heights of the pendulum, dropping them from varying heights, and seeing how many times the pendulum swings side to side.
Friction and Energy Lab
This energy stem activity is definitely a student favorite! Much like the lab from above, this can also be shown as a whole class demonstration, put in a science center, or done in small groups.
After this stem activity, students are to understand that energy gets absorbed when there is friction. In vehicles or car collisions, energy can get absorbed from all surroundings such as icy roads, dirt roads, and they each have their own impact on the vehicle’s speed and kinetic energy. After using this resource, students will understand that the more friction there is, the less kinetic energy objects will have.
For this activity, you will need the following items:
Ramp made out of cardboard or wood plank
- Ruler
- Timer (tablet, stopwatch)
- Toy vehicle
- 3-4 items from below…
- Foil
- Saran wrap
- Bubble wrap
- Cotton
- Sandpaper
- Tablecloth
You can break up the students into groups of 4 and hand out the materials. In each group, you will have the following four jobs.: timer, distance measurer, reporter, and vehicle releaser. Students will work through their lab report by releasing the toy vehicle with different materials on the ramp to see how friction affects energy.
As the facilitator, you can walk through the groups and ask students about what they are finding of friction, speed, and energy.
Energy Stem Challenge
In this energy stem challenge, students are given the following passage, “You will be designing a vehicle that will have a restrain system to keep an egg “passenger” safe. Thus, the egg will have to travel down a ramp and stay in the vehicle. If it collides with anything, the shell should be without any cracks.”
Students are expected to go through the engineering design process to complete this task. Because of the rigor and unique task, this is such an amazing culminating project for the students. They can use everything they have learned during the lessons, readings, and labs, to design their car and restraint system.
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You can use all of the activities without purchasing the resources below, but if you would like to save yourself some time, the printables are all made for you to PRINT and GO.
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If you are teaching 4th grade NGSS or upper elementary science, you will need these 30+ writing prompts! They are the perfect way to incorporate science into ELA or writing into science!
