OpenSciEd Unit 7.2 · Lesson 04 · 4.B
Look for: Refer to the Key Ideas box above
From Teacher Edition
Facilitation guidance from the lesson plan — what to notice in student thinking and how to respond while teaching.
Building towards
4.B Analyze data to identify patterns in numerical relationships and images to define an optimal proportion of reactants that result in the greatest temperature change and greatest conversion to products.
What to look / listen for
Refer to the Key Ideas box above.
What to do
If students are struggling to connect what they see with the remaining solids and liquids after the reaction to their temperature change results, draw attention to the reaction equation and pose questions, such as these:
What did the reactants look like before?
How does that compare to what is left afterward?
How does the pattern in appearance of the products (what is left afterward) correlate with the temperature change pattern?
Universal Design for Learning
Use this opportunity to identify examples of vocabulary from students’ own contexts. Have students think about how words we use every day can have similar and different meanings in an engineering context. This move can increase student engagement by broadening the class mission to explain not only the use in our classroom engineering context but also familiar everyday contexts.
Universal Design for Learning
Students can use a calculator to help determine the percentages. Allowing alternatives for use of tools, such as a calculator, can remove barriers for students in expressing their understanding by keeping the focus on the learning goal (in this case determining the relative proportions of each reactant so that we can use that in our designs). Use of such tools can help provide a match between a student’s abilities and the demands of the task.