INSTRUCTIONAL PLANNING TEMPLATE

Overview and Context

Your name(s):

Christine Shay

Grade level and school:

3rd, King Elementary

Title of lesson/activity:

Opaque Materials

Teaching date(s) and time(s):

3/1/15 at 1:20-2:15pm

Estimated time for

lesson/activity:

1 hour

Overview of lesson:

Students will continue their exploration of how light interacts

with materials. Through experimentation, they learn that
opaque materials reflect light, absorb light, or both. They
compare opaque materials that reflect light to materials that
absorb light. They also discover that sometimes an opaque
material can be changed into a translucent material by altering
its thickness.

Context of lesson:

Students have just been introduced to different materials and

have experimented with how light interacts with different
materials. They have learned of the word opaque and know
that opaque materials do not let light pass through.

Sources:

ScienceCompanion: Light

Purpose/Rationale

The purpose of this lesson is for students to learn about how

light can absorbed, reflected, or both off of opaque materials.
Learning Goals

Learning Goals

Connection to Standards

Connection to Activities

Students will be able to

explain how opaque
materials reflect light,
absorb light, or both when
light hits it.

Diagramsandexplainshowlight
enablesustoseeobjects

Students will be using different

opaque materials and
experimenting with whether light
can pass through or not.

(3rd grade objective on the

report card)

Attending to the Learners

Anticipating student ideas:

Students might have a hard time understanding how light is

absorbed by materials. I will talk about how light is absorbed
and then the energy from light is converted to heat. That is
why blacktop sidewalks feel very hot in the summer.

Making the content accessible to

all students:

All students will be partnered up so they will be held

accountable for participating, which is a big part in their

learning.

Assessments
Type of Assessment

Learning-Goals Connection

Formative Discussion

Use observations of how students are experimenting with the light and
materials as well as how the discussion goes to get a gauge of how
students understand the material.
Instructional Sequence

Materials:

Flashlight, mirror, matte paper, white paper

Time

Steps Describing What the Teacher and Students Will

Do

10 minutes

Introduction

Notes and Reminders

(including management
considerations)

Yesterday we explored several different kinds of

materials and we found out that different materials
allow different amounts of light to pass through. Today
we are going to be looking more closely at opaque
materials. Opaque materials do not allow any light to
pass through. It will either reflect the light, absorb the
light, or do both.
Draw the diagram of opaque materials on the board to
show what I mean when light is reflected and/or
abosored by the material.
Model what we are going to do for the experiment
For the next 10 minutes, you and your partner will be
experimenting with this black matte paper as well as
the mirror. Both these materials are opaque, as you
found out from your investigation yesterday. However,
when light hits these two materials, they do very
different things. Compare these two materials and
think about how they are similar, different, and what
happens when light hits these two materials.
20 minutes

Students will gather their materials and explore these

two different objects.
We will gather again at the carpet and have a quick

Tell students ahead of

time that this will just be
a quick exploration. They
should leave all their

discussion about what they observed.

-How are the mirror and the black matte board similar?
-How are they different?
-What happens to the light shining on the mirror?
-How do you know its being reflected?
-What happens to the light shining on the black matte
board?
-How do you know its being absorbed?
30 minutes

materials on their desk

since they will be getting
back to it soon.

Next we will be exploring how opaque materials can

actually become translucent if they are made thin
enough. We will be doing this by using stacks of white
paper and seeing what happens when we use different
amounts of paper.
Students will hold different amounts of paper in front of
their flashlight and see how, as the stack becomes
thinner, more and more light passes through it.
They will complete page 21 in their Light Journals.
Reflection on Planning

Learning goal for self:

A learning goal I have for myself is to be able to transition

students quickly and effectively from experimenting at their desk
to having a discussion on the carpet. Not only do I need to get
their physical bodies in different locations, I need to be able to
transition their mindsets.

Preparing to teach this lesson:

I looked through the lesson plan as well as prepared the materials

ahead of time.