Unit 8.3 Magnets: Changes between the Field Test and Version 1.0 Structural Changes to the Storyline Student and teacher survey data, interviews, and direct feedback indicated that students were very engaged in the first lesson set of the original unit (Field Test Lessons 1-5), but lost interest when they learned about alternating current in Field Test Lesson 5 because they felt that they had adequately explained the phenomenon. To address this, we chose to flip the first and second lesson set. This has the effect of moving the alternating current model idea to later in the unit (V1.0 Lesson 9). In addition, it brings magnetic fields earlier in the unit (V1.0 Lesson 4-5), addressing a concern from our state partners about the grade level in the first lesson set being too low. We chose to introduce a new class of phenomena in V1.0 Lesson 9 grown from ideas students bring from their experience, research, family and communities. The three phenomena that students read about in V1.0 Lesson 9 are designed to motivate the last three lessons of the unit (V1.0 Lessons 10-12), without abandoning the context of the speaker. Finally, we added more exploration for students around electric current throughout the last two lesson sets, because feedback indicated that some students were not fully satisfied with the explanation in the original unit. The addition of a series of circuit investigations in Lesson 8 is designed to build understanding around current. Changes were made to the storyline to ensure that the student-teacher experience was still coherent despite these structural changes (and the addition of the new performance expectation, and associated DCI elements). Addition of DCIs The EQuIP reviewers expressed concern that two DCI elements were insufficient for 24 days of instruction. The original unit was designed to address the following DCIs: PS2.B: Types of Interactions • Electrical and magnetic (electromagnetic) forces can be attractive or repulsive, and their sizes depend on the magnitudes of the charges, currents, or magnetic strengths involved and on the distances between the interacting objects. (MS-PS2-3) • Forces that act at a distance (electrical, magnetic, and gravitational) can be explained by fields that extend through space and can be mapped by their effect on a test object (a charged object, a magnet, or a ball, respectively). (MS-PS2-5) In the unit revision, an additional PE and two associated DCI elements are being addressed, bringing the total number to four: PS3.A: Definitions of Energy • A system of objects may also contain stored (potential) energy, depending on their relative positions. (MS-PS3-2) • When two objects interact, each one exerts a force on the other that can cause energy to be transferred to or from the object. (MSPS3-2) These DCIs are woven throughout the unit, but are foregrounded in the second lesson set - (lessons 7-9). Lessons 7 and 8 in particular include brand new investigations designed to foreground energy storage and transfer in the system. The addition of these two DCIs add one week to the length of the original unit. Highlighting Cause-Effect Reworking the way students engage with practices and DCIs in the context of the cross-cutting concepts (CCCs) is at the heart of this revision. We have not only added more support for teachers around CCCs in the form of callouts throughout, we have made engaging with these concepts a fundamental part of the work that students are doing as they figure out the phenomenon. The focal CCC for the unit is cause-andeffect, with systems and systems models backgrounded but also central. In order to make the cross-cutting nature of these salient for students, and engage students in using cause-and-effect to figure out phenomena, we introduced a series of progressively more complex sentence-frame scaffolds that students use throughout the unit across a number of contexts. The use of this tool consistently across the unit establishes a shared language for talking about cause-effect relationships, and thus supports students in using, sharing, and revising their current understanding of these relationships in the system. These frames show up across participation structures, as part of large and small group discussion, in student handouts, and as prompts for science notebooks. For example in Lesson 1, students use them to identify relationships between parts of the speaker system, and ask questions about them for the DQB. Throughout, students make predictions about cause-effect relationships they would expect to see (e.g. Lesson 2). In lesson 3, students explicitly consider the distinction between a prediction and a hypothesis, and rearrange their predictions to frame a hypothesis, part of SEP1 (Asking Questions and Defining Problems). They do this again several more times to support the articulation of variables and design of investigations to reveal cause-effect relationships between those variables. Students also use these frames to write additional questions for the DQB (e.g. Lesson 9). See the teacher reference in lesson 1 for a more detailed description of how these frames are used in the unit. The sentence frames are designed to help students see the connections across various practices that they engage in - this is why there is continuity of the “when we…..we observe….” language. Throughout the unit, students use this continuity to translate observations into questions, predictions into hypotheses, and hypotheses into experimental design. This allows students to organize their thinking and to make connections across lessons. In addition, students are asked to use this language in several ways in the midpoint (Lesson 6) and final (Lesson 13) assessments, so that all students get an explicit chance to demonstrate their competence using cause-effect to make sense of a different phenomena. The Lesson 1 teacher reference provides guidance for using these sentence frames. Use of the Computer Interactives In the field test version of the magnets unit, students used a computer interactive near the end of the unit to apply their ideas about the magnetic field, and test a set of predictions about cause-and-effect. In the revised version 1.0 unit, there are four touchpoints for the interactive. Students use a simplified version of the interactive in V1.0 Lesson 4 to visualize the magnetic field around a single magnet. In V1.0 Lesson 5 students use a slightly more complex interactive to visualize the magnetic field around two magnets, including how changes to the orientation of the magnets affect the field. In V1.0 Lesson 9 the interactive includes electric current. Finally in V1.0 Lesson 11, students use the interactive much as it was used in the field test version, to test their predictions about cause-and-effect relationships in the invisible magnetic field.
Field Test Lesson
Revision Lesson
Lesson 1: Anchoring Phenomenon (4 days) What force(s) causes a speaker to vibrate?
Lesson 1: Anchoring Phenomenon (4 days) What causes a speaker to vibrate?
Lesson 2: Investigation (1 day) What things can a magnet pull or push without touching?
Lesson 2: Investigation (1 day) What can a magnet pull or push without touching?
Lesson 3: Investigation (2 days) Can a magnet push and/or pull on a coil of copper wire?
Lesson 3: Investigation (2 days) How does energy transfer between things that are not touching?
Lesson 4: Investigation (2 days) How can we switch back and forth between applying a pull vs. a push on the coil of wire without flipping the magnet or the coil?
Syringe investigation removed
Lesson 5: Putting the Pieces Together (2 days) How do the magnet and the wire work together to move the speaker?
Lesson 4: Investigation (4 days) What can we figure out about the invisible space around a magnet? Simplified interactive Lesson 5: Investigation (1 day) V1 & V2 How does the magnetic field change when we add another magnet to the system?
Lesson 6: Investigation/Problematize (2 days) How can two magnets that are not touching put forces on one another? Is air helping?
Lesson 6: Putting the Pieces Together (3 days) How can we use magnetic fields to explain interactions at a distance between the magnet and the coil?
Lesson 7: Investigation (1 day) How can we picture more about the space around a magnet?
Lesson 7: Investigation (1 day) How does changing distance between two magnets affect the energy transferred from the field?
Lesson 8: Investigation (2 days) How do the directions of the forces in the field around a magnet change?
Lesson 8: Investigation (3 days) How does the energy transferred from a battery to a wire coil compare to the energy transferred from a computer to a speaker?
Lesson 9: Investigation (1 day) How does distance from the magnet or between magnets affect the strength of forces on the magnets?
Lesson 9: Putting the Pieces Together (3 days)* How do the magnet and the electromagnet work together to move the speaker?
Lesson 10: Investigation (2 days) What else determines the strength of the force on an object in a magnetic field?
Broadening to related phenomena Lesson 10: Investigation (3 days) How does distance affect the strength of force pairs in a magnetic field?
Lesson 11: Putting the Pieces Together (2 days) How can we use magnetic fields to explain forces between magnets in the speaker that do not touch?
Lesson 11: Investigation (3 days) What else determines the strength of the force pairs between two magnets in a magnetic field?
Lesson 12: Culminating Task (3 days) What can we change in the speaker to influence the forces between magnets and affect the sound?
Lesson 12: Putting the Pieces Together (2 days) How can a magnet move another object without touching it?
KEY Foregrounding DCIs associated with MS-PS3-2 (Energy) Model explains how speakers make sound Significant new investigations/activity added Lessons merged Lesson removed Storyline anchors/PPTs New lesson
Simplified interactive V3