Lesson on Light Rays
Students in Mrs. Halferty’s fourth grade class are studying light. The basis of their light-energy unit focuses on the characteristics of light and its interactions with materials. It also covers light as a form of energy and transformations of that energy.
During each part of the unit, students are expanding their skills in scientific inquiry, making predictions, summarizing, and developing supporting claims with evidence.
In one activity, students explored different kinds of light sources and learned that light travels in a straight line. They each made their own light tubes to gather evidence that light travels in a straight line, used the tubes to study color, and then wrote paragraphs on their findings.
Then, while experimenting, the students discovered that light from a flashlight has a circle-shape when it hits a solid surface. But, when they changed the angle of the flashlight in relation to the surface, the circle of light changed to an oval shape.
The class is also reading together the book, Can You See In The Dark by Carolyn Jaynes, which answers the question whether or not we need light to see.
Clairbourn School, 8400 Huntington Drive, San Gabriel, (626) 286-3108 or visit www.clairbourn.org.
