Looking for an easy-to-use heat unit for elementary students? This 5-week unit contains activities for each day of the week and gives students the knowledge they need to understand the following 5 topics: heat production, heat transfer, conduction, convection, and radiation. Let this resource take the prep off of your plate while providing your students with targeted practice related to different types of heat energy.
Here’s what you get!
Each of the 5 topics contains PowerPoint notes to help explain each type of heat energy, an interactive lapbook, reading passages with comprehension questions, and a fill-in-the-blank quiz. There are also STEM activities to help your students review all 5 types of heat energy at the end of the unit.
Daily Activities
Monday:
To begin each topic, I project the slides presentation for my students. These presentations are compatible with PowerPoint or Google Slides. The slides define each type of heat energy using examples and pictures. Use these slides as an introduction to the types of heat energy or as a review that students can reference throughout the week.
Tuesday:
The following day, students read a targeted passage about the week’s heat topic. These passages help students learn more about the topic while also providing opportunities to practice their reading comprehension skills. Each topic has corresponding questions to help students practice using text evidence to answer questions about the story. Print the science reading passages or send a link to your students using Google Forms.
Wednesday:
After students have interacted with the slides and the passage, they complete work in their Heat Energy lapbook. The lapbooks have an interactive component for students to add for each type of heat energy. This helps keep students engaged with their learning as they create foldables and flipbooks related to each topic.
Thursday:
On the fourth day, I give students fill-in-the-blank quizzes that allow them to practice the content we have learned that week. I allow students to use the slide notes to help them complete this. This is a great way to help them study the content as well. Assign the PowerPoint Quizzes as paper or in Google Forms. Quickly collect grades with this easy grader too!
Friday:
We use Fridays as a free day or an experiment day to extend learning. Sometimes I even use Fridays to introduce the next topic.
We repeat the steps above for all 5 topics!
Review Activities
Once we have finished all 5 topics, we review everything we have learned by completing a SCOOT using task cards. The SCOOT has questions related to all 5 topics that we have learned. This activity provides another easy grade for your grade book.
We end this unit by doing an ice cream STEM activity. This activity can be used as a STEM activity to teach heat transfer or states of matter. Other states of matter STEM activities can be found in this blog post.
Ice cream is all about heat transfer. In this activity, students make ice cream in a bag. As explained in the reading passage that students will read, the heat in the milk transfers into the ice, making the ice melt quickly. Want to give this ice cream recipe a try? Click here to access the freebie.
Are you also planning to teach about sound energy? Check out my blog post to learn about STEM activities to keep your students engaged.
This unit has always been a hit with my students and something I looked forward to teaching every year. I hope that you love this heat unit for elementary as much as I do!
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