Description
What our Elements: Helium lesson plan includes
Lesson Objectives and Overview: Elements: Helium is a high-interest reading comprehension lesson plan. As such, students will practice various close reading and comprehension skills. In addition, they will learn about one of the most common elements in the Periodic Table of Elements. This lesson is for students in 5th grade and 6th grade.
Classroom Procedure
Every lesson plan provides you with a classroom procedure page that outlines a step-by-step guide to follow. You do not have to follow the guide exactly. The guide helps you organize the lesson and details when to hand out worksheets. It also lists information in the yellow box that you might find useful. You will find the lesson objectives, state standards, and number of class sessions the lesson should take to complete in this area. In addition, it describes the supplies you will need as well as what and how you need to prepare beforehand.
Teacher Notes
The paragraph on this page provides a little more information or guidance on what to expect from the lesson. It explains that you can teach this lesson in a whole-class setting or as an independent, small-group activity. You can use the blank lines to record any thoughts or ideas you have as you prepare.
ELEMENTS: HELIUM LESSON PLAN CONTENT PAGES
Discovery and Practical Applications
The Elements: Helium lesson plan contains two content pages. Helium was first discovered in a very unusual way—by looking at the sun! In 1868, scientists Pierre Janssen and Joseph Norman Lockyer noticed a strange yellow line in the sunlight using a special spectroscope tool. This line didn’t match any element found on Earth. Lockyer guessed it was a new element and named it helium after Helios, the Greek god of the sun. It wasn’t until 1895 that scientists found helium on Earth, hidden in a rock mineral called cleveite.
You probably know helium as the gas that makes balloons float, but it has other important uses too. It is mixed with oxygen in hospitals to help people with breathing problems. It’s also used to cool the powerful magnets in MRI machines, which doctors use to see inside the body. Even NASA uses helium to clean fuel tanks and launch rockets safely. So, while it makes birthday balloons float, it also helps save lives.
Helium is a gas lighter than air, so it rises, which is why it makes balloons float. While it is the second-most common element in the universe, it’s rare on Earth. Helium is made deep underground when radioactive elements break down in rocks. It can then be collected in natural gas pockets and removed for use. Because it doesn’t catch fire and is very stable, helium is useful in medical machines and high-tech industries like computer chips.
Helium Facts and Why the Element Matters
When people talk after inhaling a little helium, their voice sounds like a cartoon because sound moves faster through helium than through air. But that’s not even the most interesting thing about this element! Helium is the only element that can’t become a solid at normal pressure, even at extraordinary frigid temperatures. When it gets cold, almost as cold as outer space, it turns into a liquid that acts strangely. This special kind of liquid is called a superfluid.
In this superfluid state, helium can flow without any friction. That means it can keep moving forever without slowing down! It can also do things like climb up the sides of a glass or sneak through tiny holes that even air can’t get through. Scientists say this happens because of quantum mechanics, a science that explains how tiny atoms behave. So when helium is a superfluid, all the atoms act like one big team instead of by themselves.
Helium may seem like just a gas for balloons or making your voice sound funny. But it’s essential in science, medicine, and technology. It helps doctors see inside the body, makes space exploration safer, and helps build tiny things like computer chips. Because helium is rare and takes millions of years to form underground, scientists are careful about its use.
ELEMENTS: HELIUM LESSON PLAN WORKSHEETS
The Elements: Helium lesson plan includes two worksheets: an activity worksheet and a review worksheet. Each one will help students solidify their grasp of the material they learned throughout the lesson. You can refer to the classroom procedure guidelines to know when to hand out each worksheet.
HELIUM FLOAT ACTIVITY WORKSHEET
For the activity, students will use the supplies to test helium’s strength by seeing how many paper clips it takes to keep a helium balloon from floating away. After they finish the experiment, they will answer the discussion questions.
REVIEW WORKSHEET
The review worksheet lists 5 questions based on the content. These questions all relate to the content pages, so students will need to refer to them often for the answers. In addition, each question provides which reading tool the question corresponds to, such as text feature, vocabulary, or comprehension.
Worksheet Answer Keys
At the end of the lesson plan document is an answer key for the practice worksheet. The correct answers are all in red to make it easier for you to compare them with students’ responses. If you choose to administer the lesson pages to your students via PDF, you will need to save a new file that omits these pages. Otherwise, you can simply print out the applicable pages and keep these as reference for yourself when grading assignments.
