Harnessing Electricity

In this lesson students will generate questions based on their observations of a teacher demo involving static electricity. Students will use these questions and generate more questions as needed as they move through the explore, explain, engineer, and extend portion of this lesson. In the explore portion of the lesson, students will analyze observational evidence from two investigations involving static electricity. Students will then read and annotate informational text and compare their summaries to a video. Students will use their summaries and observations to answer self-generated questions. Students will engineer an electroscope to test the ability of different materials to generate static electricity. Students will extend their learning by using two simulations that allows them to visualize the transfer of charge between different objects to answer their self-generated questions. The formative assessment is a Kahoot! Quiz and they will develop and use models to compare and contrast naturally occurring and human-harnessed electricity. Students will present and explain their models using textual and experimental evidence to validate their models. Students that need reteaching will work in groups on an investigation and individually on a handout related to the principles to the transfer of electrical charges.