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Grant Wood Area Education Agency

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Magnets and Motors

Lesson 10: Testing the Electromagnet

Lesson Summary

In this lesson, the teams assemble and conduct the experiment that they designed in Lesson 9.

Teacher Background

Depending on the ideas that your students had in Lesson 9, you probably will have teams conducting anywhere from two to five different experiments during the lesson.  All of the experiments will produce results.  The results may not be what you or the students expect them to be, but that is what science is all about.

The point of doing an experiment is to find out what happens and to try to learn from it. Students should be encouraged to experiment by changing only the variable they have chosen and to pay close attention to what happens.  Much can be learned from all kinds of results.

Set-up/Management Tips

  1. Please remind students again not to leave the switches on for too long or the wires will get warm and the batteries will weaken.
  2. Make sure that all of the items needed for the planned experiments are available. Some items will be needed by all students. Therefore, those items can be handed out in the manner using numbered baggies. The other items can be given to individual teams.
  3. Remind students of the question they are trying to answer.
  4. Assist students as needed. However try not to do their experiments for them or to coach them too often.
  5. If you have not conducted this lesson before, you may want to pick one or two experiments and try them out yourself.

Literacy Support

Students should be writing the results of their experiment in their science notebooks.  See the Student Activity Book for Lesson 10.

Scientific Vocabulary
The following words are key vocabulary words that will be introduced in this lesson and reinforced throughout the unit:

No new vocabulary introduced this lesson.