The Sounds that Surround Us Inside

Age group
  • Junior/Intermediate (Age 9 to 12)

Curriculum Goal

Junior: Matter and Energy

  • Describe properties of sound, including that sound travels through a medium as a wave and that sound can be absorbed or reflected and modified.
  • Explain how vibrations cause sound waves.

Junior: STEM Investigation and Communication Skills 

  • Use a scientific research process and associated skills to conduct investigations.
  • Use a scientific experimentation process and associated skills to conduct investigations.
     
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Context
  • Children have experienced a variety of sounds in different environments.
  • Children can identify and describe a sound’s direction and volume.
  • Structures and Protocols: Using a whip-around by asking children to write down a response to the question, “What do we think sound is?” helps the discussion, while think-pair-share works well when sharing sound experiment results. Children will be accustomed to sharing their theories and ideas in whole-class discussions and will have experience writing down their scientific observations in journals.
  • Learning Goal: Children will Know that sound travels in waves from its point of creation to its point of reception, Understand that sound is a form of energy that takes place in a medium, and be able to pay close attention to the sounds of the classroom and describe those sounds.
Materials
  • Speaker
  • Microphone
  • Sound journals for children
  • Large room with space to move around

Lesson

  • Lead a class discussion by posing the following questions to the children:
    • What do we think sound is?
    • How many sounds can we hear in the classroom right now?
    • What are some of our favorite sounds that make us feel at home?
    • What ideas or theories do we have about how sound travels across distances?
    • What do we think happens to the sound a tree makes if it falls in the forest and nobody is there to hear it?
  • Ask clarifying questions to identify how they think sounds are created. Prompt children to describe their visual interpretations of sound.
    • For example, do children describe sound as a physical entity, something resembling ocean waves, or something else altogether?
  • Provide a causal explanation for how sound is a form of energy created by vibrations:
    • “Three things need to happen for a sound to be made and heard. First, an object vibrates, which makes tiny, very fast back-and-forth movements. For example, when a musician strums guitar strings, the strings vibrate. The vibration moves the surrounding air and produces waves of sound. Second, the sound waves pass into a medium. A medium is any substance through which the waves can travel. Sound waves may travel through many mediums like air, water, and solid objects. Third, a receiver, like a person’s ear, picks up the sound waves. The ear changes the sound waves into signals that travel to the brain. The brain understands these signals as sound.” (Adapted from Brittanica Kids)
  • Show the children how they can feel the vibrations their vocal cords make when they produce different pitches.
    • Explanation: “The pitch of a sound is how high or low it is. Faster vibrations cause sounds with a higher pitch.” (Adapted from Brittanica Kids)
  • After some experimentation with higher and lower pitches, use the speaker and microphone to demonstrate how the vibrations of a sound spread out over distances and get quieter as they move further away from the source.
    • With no amplification, a speaking voice cannot easily be heard, but when you turn on the speaker and adjust the volume, the speaker amplifies and recreates those vibrations much stronger and louder.
    • Explanation: “The intensity of sound is how loud or soft it is. Intensity depends on the strength of the vibrations. Stronger vibrations cause louder sounds.” (Adapted from Brittanica Kids)
  • Ask children to pair up in groups of two.
    • Ask children to pair up in groups of two.
    • Children will stand face to face at an arms-length distance, take turns speaking to each other using an indoor voice, and then write down the distance, pitch, and intensity of the sound of their partner’s voice in their science journal.
    • A scale of 1 to 10 works well here, with 1 being very quiet and 10 being very loud. Distance can be measured using metres.
    • Children then move a different distance apart and repeat the same measurements of distance, pitch, and intensity of their partner’s voice.
    • Children will then work in their pairs to write about what happens to pitch and intensity when they move closer or further away from the source of a sound.
    • Did anything unexpected happen? Did they conduct any additional experiments, like speaking with an object between them? Write those observations down too.  
  • Gather children back and ask them to share what they learned in their experiments with sound and distance.
    • What questions do they have about sound and how it interacts with the environment around them?
    • What might happen if they tried this activity outside instead of inside? 

Look Fors

  • What did the children already know about sound? What were they curious about?
  • How many sounds could the children identify in the classroom, and what kinds of sounds were they most attuned to?
  • You can conduct a formative assessment by taking anecdotal notes on child participation and discussion during the activity.
  • You can conduct a summative assessment by looking at the pair’s completed page in their sound journal noting how different distances impact a sound’s pitch and intensity, along with any other observations they noted.  
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