PD Modules
Teaching About Heat and Thermal Energy

What You'll Do

Because the concepts of heat and thermal energy are abstract, it is easy for middle school students to intuit inaccurate ideas based on their everyday experiences. Media can provide you with visual tools to challenge their conceptions and help rethink their scientific understanding.

In this STEM Professional Development module, you will deepen your own understanding of temperature, thermal energy, and heat through a curated selection of digital media. You will visualize relevant energy-related disciplinary core ideas found the Next Generation Science Standards, and consider how these media support student thinking.

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Digital Media to Support Your Teaching
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Digital media can be deployed to demonstrate and explain heat and thermal energy in ways that help your students learn concepts they sometimes struggle to grasp. Some of the best media resources may feature:

  • visualizations of phenomena that are difficult to understand because they cannot be directly observed
  • demonstrations that directly address or challenge common conceptions
  • experiences that allow students to manipulate factors and strengthen their understanding of cause–and-effect relationships

The module provides suggestions for media-enhanced instruction of these disciplinary core ideas from the Next Generation Science Standards.

  • The term “heat” as used in everyday language refers both to thermal energy (the motion of atoms or molecules within a substance) and the transfer of that thermal energy from one object to another. In science, heat is used only for this second meaning; it refers to the energy transferred due to the temperature difference between two objects. (MS-PS3.A)

  • Temperature is not a measure of energy; the relationship between the temperature and the total energy of a system depends on the types, states, and amounts of matter present. (MS-PS3.A)

  • Energy is spontaneously transferred out of hotter regions or objects and into colder ones. (MS-PS3.B)