👩‍🏫 Teacher’s Guide

Objective
Students will explain how light travels, reflects, refracts, and is absorbed, and identify natural and artificial sources of light.

Vocabulary
light energy, reflect, refract, absorb, source, opaque, translucent, transparent

Teaching Notes

• Begin with examples of natural vs. artificial light.
• Demonstrate reflection, refraction, and absorption with mirrors, water, and colored paper.
• Reinforce vocabulary using real-world examples.
• Encourage full-sentence explanations of what light is doing.

🧒 Student Worksheet

Concept and Helping Material

Definition. Light travels in straight lines until it hits a surface. It can be reflected, refracted, or absorbed depending on the material.
Helping ideas and samples:

• Shine a flashlight through clear, cloudy, and opaque items.
• Use mirrors or water to observe reflection and refraction.
• Compare dark and light colors under sunlight.

Vocabulary and Definition

• — energy that travels in waves and can be seen
• — to bounce light from a surface
• — to bend light when it passes into a new material
• — to take in light energy instead of reflecting it
• — something that gives off light
• — material that blocks light
• — material that lets some light pass through
• — material that lets most light pass through

Words to Learn

, , , , , , ,

Sentences to Fill In

1. The Sun is a natural __ of light.
2. Light that bounces off a mirror is said to __.
3. Light that bends in water is said to __.
4. Dark colors __ more light than they reflect.
5. Glass is __ because light passes through it easily.

Hands-On Experiment or Activities

What You Need: simple classroom items.
What You Do: Shine a flashlight on mirrors, colored paper, and water. Observe which materials reflect, absorb, or refract light.
Think and Talk: What changed? What stayed the same?

Reflection

• Which materials reflected light best in your experiment?
• Why do black shirts feel hotter than white ones in sunlight?