OpenSciEd Unit 6.2 · Lesson 03 · 3.A
Look for: the differences between hot and cold liquids
From Teacher Edition
Facilitation guidance from the lesson plan — what to notice in student thinking and how to respond while teaching.
Building towards
3.A Develop and use a model to explain how the best-performing and worst-performing cup systems affect the temperature change of a substance inside a system.
What to look / listen for
New aspects included in models, such as these:
the differences between hot and cold liquids
what is happening when liquids increase or decrease in temperature
how cup features work to slow both the cooling down and warming up of liquids
Most importantly, notice whether students’ mechanisms for explaining how liquids warm up or cool down are the same or different. It’s not important whether students have the “correct” ideas; rather, your assessment can help you understand students’ initial ideas about what it means for a substance to have a particular temperature and what mechanisms are involved in changing the temperature of a substance.
What to do
It will be helpful to collect students’ notebooks between the two days to see how students are explaining how cup system features can keep liquids both hot and cold. However, some students may want to take their notebooks home to finish their models. In these models, see how students’ model ideas do and do not change with different starting temperatures of the liquid inside the cup. For example, if the cup begins with a hot liquid inside, do students use a different mechanism to explain how it cools down compared to the mechanism students use for how a cold drink warms up? It is not important for students’ models to “look nice” or have details that are unrelated to the goal of explaining how the cup features work.