Hands on Experience with Light!

This source was an informative and detailed lesson plan for middle school students—it immerses students in a hands on experience that will engage and teach them a lot of information about th... See More

This source was an informative and detailed lesson plan for middle school students—it immerses students in a hands on experience that will engage and teach them a lot of information about the visible light spectrum and diffraction. Specifically, by building and exploring with the spectroscope on various light sources, students do not only investigate how light works, but analyze how the parts of a spectroscope contribute to that. Furthermore, there are multiple points in this resource which tie in places in the lesson for student discussion and interaction. This is beneficial by allowing students the opportunity to build on their own knowledge from their peers. Additionally, this source incorporates the use of observation making, model drawing, and recording of data with the light experiment, bringing students a chance to learn meaningfully. Furthermore, teaching students beyond the visible light content, and into skills they can transfer over into other science areas with jotting down things they notice, searching for data trends/patterns, drawing out phenomena, etc.!

Create a Rainbow

This source gave a great hands-on approach for students to investigate how white light is composed of the entire visible light spectrum by creating their very own spectroscope! This resource... See More

This source gave a great hands-on approach for students to investigate how white light is composed of the entire visible light spectrum by creating their very own spectroscope! This resource gives great directions for how to lead student discussions and how student's can create their own spectroscope with a slit-end cap of the spectroscope, tube, and lens-cap (LEC). Having students be able to observe the white in a straight line yet the red and blue/violet bending is an incredible visual for diffraction and can propose the questioning in students as to why there may have been more bending in certain colors over others, all while reinforcing that they all add up to create white light. This source is also beneficial as it incorporates math into the mix by having the students measure between dashed lines to see which color bent the most. With this information students can apply/transfer their learning over to real life encounters they have with this such as raindrops or natural rainbows they may see say, near a waterfall! This resource is a great hands-on approach!