Exploring Light and Shadow Phenomena (Inside)
At about 10:50 if have been exploring outside on a sunny day or at about 10:30 if it is raining:

Place lamp with clear vertical bulb with long filament in front of white board covered with a piece of chart paper
(chart paper disperses the light and prevents white board from acting like a mirror).

• How would you describe this light bulb?
•What do you predict you will see when we turn on the light?
• Why do you think that?
(some will say light spread all over chart paper, some will predict image of the filament like a mirror).
• What are the ideas that you have just heard expressed? What are the possibilities for what people are expecting to see?

Plug in lamp.
• What do you see?
(everyone can see the lit lamp; the light is dispersed all over the chart paper; also on the ceiling, also on people’s faces)

Interpret ‘powerful idea’: observation that everyone can see the light and that the light is dispersed all over the chart paper suggests that light left the filament in all directions.
Powerful idea: light leaves a light source in all directions.

Introducing the journal pages:
Distribute journal pages with information about what goes in each section. Discuss the purpose of each section on the page, front and back.
Here is a journal page that you can use to keep track of your initial ideas, what you are thinking during your exploration, and any vocabulary that is new or used differently from what you expect.
The graduate student who designed this journal page, Adam Devitt, was a special education teacher who based his design on recommended reading strategies.
The front page models before-reading and during-reading strategies; the back page models after-reading strategies. Using these journal pages is a way to make connections across literacy and science curricula.
Journal Page Template with Explanations

Also distribute blank journal pages.
Journal Page Template
Provide time to record what just experienced with this activity.

Exploring Shadow Phenomena (Inside)

Distribute a second blank journal page for use during the next activity exploring light and shadow phenomena.

A. Small group discussion:
• What is a shadow?
• What conditions are necessary for a shadow to be formed?

B. Here is a light source (frosted incandescent lamp), a rectangular object, and screen (white board covered with chart paper).
Open-ended: What can you find out about shadows?
Or
Guided if not much time available because we were outside on a sunny day
• Where do you think the shadow of the object will appear?
• Draw a diagram that represents your idea about how and where a shadow is formed.
• Turn on lamp. Observe where the shadow is.
(use meter stick to trace path from light bulb past obstacle to edge of shadow)

C. Large group discuss: What is a shadow? What conditions are necessary for a shadow to be formed?
Powerful idea: There are two kinds of shadows:
a) object blocks light from shining on a nearby surface (ground, wall, table…)
b) object blocks light from shining on the back s\\ide of the object itself

Powerful idea: Light travels in straight lines
(use meter stick to trace path from light bulb past obstacle to edge of shadow)