The purpose of this project is for students to solve an authentic problem in their community (the school). Teachers should help students identify a problem area in the school that gets much too noisy (e.g. the cafeteria). The lack of acoustic absorption leads to sounds reverberating and amplifying. Because of the noise level, students may be punished with silent lunch. Is it possible to make a positive change before it even becomes a problem?
Students are posed with this problem as the basis of their learning. “How can we use our understanding of sound energy to create sound absorbing materials?” Throughout the course of the unit, students will learn through lectures, guided studies of videos and articles, and hands-on investigations. Students will also be given ample time to work in their groups of 3-4 to create technology that will lower the volume of sound in a room.
Author: Philip Carey
View the lesson and supporting materials here.
- Key Knowledge and Understanding
- Key Vocabulary
- Literacy Connections
- Success Skills
- Project Summary
- Driving Question
- Entry Event
- Products
- PROJECT DESIGN: OVERVIEW
- Making Products Public
- Resources Needed
- Reflection Methods
- PROJECT DESIGN: STUDENT LEARNING GUIDE
Key Knowledge and Understanding
4.P.3.1 Students know basic forms of energy: light, heat, sound, electrical, and energy of motion.
- This project focuses on sound energy and the understanding that sound travels in waves of varying wavelengths. Students will learn this firsthand as they create materials that can absorb this energy.
- Sound starts from a source, such as a speaker or a person’s voice
- Sound travels through a medium. This is typically air, but it could be just about anything, from metal to water.
- Sound travels as a pressure wave. Particles move forward and then back again.
- We perceive sound as these waves finally reach our eardrums and activate our nervous system.
RI.4.10 By the end of year, read and comprehend informational texts, including history/social studies, science, and technical texts, in the grades 4-5 text complexity band proficiently, with scaffolding as needed at the high end of the range.
- Students are expected to read and gather information from an informational text. Scaffold with levelled texts and graphic organizers along with intentional teams with heterogeneous ability grouping.
RI.4.4 Determine the meaning of general academic and domain-specific words or phrases in a text relevant to a grade 4 topic or subject area.
- Students will read a book on sound energy to decipher the definition of domain-specific vocabulary words.
W.4.4 Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development and organization are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.
- Students are expected to write as a formative assessment task, but also must produce a script with their team for an advertisement that justifies and promotes their product
W.4.7, W.4.8, W.4.9 Research to build and present knowledge
- Students will research sound energy and be presented with learning experiences from the teacher in which they will build a strong understanding to justify the choices their team makes in the PBL experience. They will present this information in their advertisement script.
Optional Math Connection: The teacher could assign a dollar value to the PBL materials. Each team would have an allowance and a maximum dollar amount they can spend on their product. Teams would have to add and subtract whole numbers and decimals to ensure they do not exceed their allowance.
Key Vocabulary
Vibration: A rapid back and forth movement
Decibel: The unit that measures the volume of a sound
Pitch: Describes a sound as “high” or “low”
Wave Motion: Energy transferred as a regular vibratory (back and forth) pattern
Frequency: How often a peak or valley of the wave comes; Affects pitch.
Literacy Connections
Writing:
Students will write to explain their understanding.
Students will create an advertisement to market their product.
Students will use appropriate persuasive tone for a consumer audience.
Reading:
Students will read and interpret a nonfiction text.
Students will determine the meaning of domain-specific words and phrases
Success Skills
Critical Thinking/Problem Solving
- Students must engineer their own version of sound dampening products in a very open-ended project
- Students will take the content knowledge they gather and analyze how to use that to their advantage in dampening sound.
Self-Management
- This PBL unit is self-paced. There is a due date and there are regular check-ins, but students are responsible for completing the work at their own pace. With teacher support, students should learn to manage their time and progress.
Collaboration
- Students will be working in teams of 3-4 with specific jobs and responsibilities within the group.
- Students will be regularly reflecting about their skills as group members and brainstorm how to improve these skills.
Other: Communication
- Students will be not only communicating productively with each other so that everyone can have a voice in the final product, but they will also be tasked with creating an advertisement in which they are communicating their ideas with the community at large.
Project Summary
The Rationale:
The purpose of this project is for students to solve an authentic problem in their community (the school). Teachers should help students identify a problem area in the school that gets much too noisy (e.g. the cafeteria). The lack of acoustic absorption leads to sounds reverberating and amplifying. Because of the noise level, students may be punished with silent lunch. Is it possible to make a positive change before it even becomes a problem?
The Problem:
Students are posed with this problem as the basis of their learning. “How can we use our understanding of sound energy to create sound absorbing materials?” Throughout the course of the unit, students will learn through lectures, guided studies of videos and articles, and hands-on investigations. Students will also be given ample time to work in their groups of 3-4 to create technology that will lower the volume of sound in a room.
The Product:
- Each team must fill a box with the materials of their choice. To limit variables in the project, an optimal box is a pizza box. Thus, the only variable is the type and amount of material they placed inside. Note: ask any chain pizza restaurant for donated large pizza boxes.
- The teacher should have a variety of materials available for students to place in their boxes: styrofoam, cotton, cardboard, insulation, and any other recycled materials. Students should have enough of a variety that they can test different solutions. Note: don’t be afraid to send a notice out to parents that you are collecting materials to reuse for a project.
- Test the technology they create in the classroom so that they can follow the engineering design process to optimize the sound absorption, but eventually the boxes should be authentically used in a noisy area of the school to help absorb the excess sound in that area.
Testing the Product:
- A decibel meter can be purchased online for about $20, or you can find free Smart Phone apps that measure decibels.
- The teacher should establish a testing area, even just in the classroom. Play music or a sound tone directly at your decibel meter without the product box between the speaker and your decibel meter. Take note of the decibel level. Then, put the box (and its contents) between the speaker and your decibel meter. Take note of the decibel level. The difference between the decibel readings shows the dampening effect of your product.
Driving Question
How can we use our knowledge of sound energy to engineer our own technology to dampen sound?
Entry Event
The point of an entry event is to lay the foundation for the whole project. Students will be extraordinarily invested in learning about sound if they truly feel that the work they are doing is important and meaningful for the school community. See two options below, but also know that you can use your own creativity and resources available to you to launch the unit in your own way.
Option 1: There are companies that professionally contract to optimize acoustics for businesses. Try to find one in your area, and contact them to see if an acoustic engineer would be willing to come launch the unit for your class. The engineer can discuss what they do for businesses. Your students can feel the importance of dampening sound in the school.
Option 2: Without a professional to launch the project, be creative! Perhaps you can do a walk around the school with your students so that they can identify areas that are too noisy. Perhaps an administrator can come into your classroom to deliver the PBL challenge of dampening sound in a certain area, stressing why this will help our community.
Products
Individual:
- Formative assessments
- Self-paced playlist work
- Written justifications of their product
Specific content and competencies to be assessed:
- See above: “Key Knowledge and Understanding” section
Team:
- Product box makerspace product
- Advertisement script for their product
Specific content and competencies to be assessed:
- See above: “Key Knowledge and Understanding” section
PROJECT DESIGN: OVERVIEW
Making Products Public
Much like the entry event, making the products public is a strong way that the teacher can make the PBL experience authentic for his/her students. Students should know that they are using their science knowledge to actually make the community a better place.
This project will naturally be public because the product boxes will be in a space in the school that was determined to be a problem area for excess noise.
Additionally, teachers could host a culminating celebration where stakeholders in the project—school administrators, and even family members—of your students are invited. Students could present their advertising scripts to try to sell the audience on their product.
Resources Needed
On-site people, facilities:
- Permission from administration to display the product boxes in an area of the school
Equipment:
- Decibel meter or phone app to measure amplitude
Materials:
- Enough product boxes for each group
- Scrap materials for stuffing such as cardboard, styrofoam, packing paper, plastic bags, and more!
Community Resources:
- Special guest to launch the unit during the entry event (See the entry event section for more information)
Reflection Methods
Journal/Learning Log
- Students will have opportunities to journal in their interactive science notebooks about the content and their acquisition of success skills
Focus Group
- These are small group meetings in which the teacher facilitates a discussion about what is going well and what can be improved to keep student groups optimized, positive, and efficiently working.
Whole-Class Discussion
- Before and after work sessions, the teacher might facilitate a whole group discussion.
- Topics might include: positive interactions among teammates, staying on task during group work, how to settle disagreements within the team, and more!
Other:
- Group work reflection sheet: This is included in the resource folder for this project. This is a self-assessment for students to fill out several times throughout the lifetime of this project. This should be a moment where they can identify what they need to work on as a group member, this leading to development of a 21st century workplace mindset.
Notes:
Possible Student Jobs in Groups
- Facilitator: leads the team, keeps everyone on track, and delegates.
- Editor: Checks requirements (rubric) for the project and makes sure the project is meeting the requirements.
- Resource Manager: Gathers any materials the team needs for the project and keeps the area clean.
- Information Specialist: Ensures that the scientific information being used in the project and script is accurate
PROJECT DESIGN: STUDENT LEARNING GUIDE
| Project: “Peace and Quiet” – Students engineer a sound dampening product for a trouble spot of excess sound in the school. | ||||||||||||
| Driving Question: How can we use our understanding of sound energy to reduce the effect of excess noise in the school? | ||||||||||||
| Final Product(s) -Engineered Product -Script | Learning Outcomes/Targets Broken down by Product and Script | Checkpoints/Formative Assessments Checks for understanding along the way | Instructional Strategies for All Learners Adjustments to ensure success? | |||||||||
| Engineered Product: Student groups will each create an engineered sound dampening solution that could be put in a problem area to absorb sound waves and reduce noise pollution in the school. | Key Knowledge for Project: 4.P.3.1 Students know the basic form of energy: sound | -Sound energy quiz -Journal checks after lessons -Conferring with teams | -Audio, visual, and tactile experiences for students to learn about sound in a tangible way -Guided notes and graphic organizers -Pair students intentionally if needed | |||||||||
| Key Skill for Project: RI.4.10 By the end of year, read and comprehend informational texts, including … science … in the grades 4-5 text complexity band proficiently, with scaffolding as needed at the high end of the range. | Same as above | -The text in Science A-Z provides different levels and a book in Spanish -Guided notes and graphic organizers -Pair students intentionally if needed | ||||||||||
| Key Knowledge for Project: RI.4.4 Determine the meaning of general academic and domain-specific words or phrases in a text relevant to a grade 4 topic or subject area. | Same as above | Same as above | ||||||||||
| Success Skills for Project: Creative and critical thinking, Communication, Collaboration, and Self-Management | -Group work self-assessment | -Intentionally build teams to control for the any negative interactions among group members -Guide students in picking their roles if they struggle to find a role that is right for them. -Checklist or calendar to help students manage their own time and progress | ||||||||||
| Script and Presentation: In a group, write a script for an advertisement for your product. | Key Knowledge for Script: W.4.4 Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development and organization are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience. | -Check rough draft of script | -Graphic organizers and examples of scripts and advertisements -Sentence starters for persuasive statements | |||||||||
| Key Knowledge for Script: W.4.7, W.4.8, W.4.9 Research to build and present knowledge | -Journal checks will give formative data on how research is proceeding -Checking the rough draft of the script will give formative data on their “presentation of knowledge” | Same as above | ||||||||||
| Key Success Skills for Script: Self-Management, Collaboration, Communication, Creative and Critical Thinking | Group work self-assessment | Same as above…. -Intentionally build teams to control for the any negative interactions among group members -Guide students in picking their roles if they struggle to find a role that is right for them. -Checklist or calendar to help students manage their own time and progress | ||||||||||