Reflecting Light & Vision Activities for 4th Grade Science

Help students explore how light reflects and supports vision with this engaging 5E lesson aligned to NGSS 4-PS4-2. Through hands-on experiments, reading passages, research tasks, videos, and interactive exercises, students investigate the properties of light in a nine-station lab. Editable presentations, interactive notebooks, and note-taking templates reinforce key concepts, while student-choice projects encourage deeper exploration. Assessments, including STAAR 2.0-aligned options and modified versions, help evaluate understanding. With printable and digital formats, Spanish translations, and flexible implementation for both in-person and virtual learning, this comprehensive lesson supports diverse learners with a multimodal approach. The resources below will give students a comprehensive understanding of light and vision. All of the following materials are also included in the Kesler Science Membership.

The Kesler Science Reflecting Light and Vision 5E Lesson is a comprehensive, low-prep unit designed to engage elementary students in physical science. This multiday lesson includes editable presentations, worksheets, student-choice projects, and assessments, all aligned with NGSS 4-PS4-2. The lesson supports differentiated, student-led learning with multimodal activities, printable and digital formats, and Spanish translations for key materials.

Following the 5E Model, the unit begins with engagement through discussion prompts, vocabulary cards, and activities addressing common misconceptions. In exploration, students engage with a nine-station lab featuring hands-on experiments, reading passages, research tasks, videos, and interactive exercises. Explanation includes editable PowerPoints, interactive notebooks, and note-taking templates to reinforce concepts. Students elaborate on their understanding through choice projects, while evaluation offers STAAR 2.0-aligned assessments, modified versions, and review worksheets.

Designed for flexibility, this lesson works seamlessly in both classroom and virtual learning environments, allowing students to engage with the material in multiple ways while giving teachers the tools needed to support all learners.

Engage your 4th-grade students with this student-led station lab on Reflecting Light and Vision. Designed for in-class or virtual learning, this hands-on lesson guides students as they develop a model to describe how light reflects from objects and enters the eye, allowing objects to be seen.

Students explore concepts through nine interactive stations featuring videos, readings, research, and hands-on tasks. Input stations introduce new material through exploration, research, reading, and video activities, while output stations encourage students to organize, illustrate, write, and assess their understanding. A bonus challenge station offers extension activities for early finishers.

With differentiated passages available in English and Spanish, this modular resource supports personalized learning. The station lab includes all necessary signage, literature, task cards, and digital options for PowerPoint or Google Slides, making it an engaging, low-prep addition to your physical science curriculum.

The Reflecting Light and Vision Student Choice Projects provide 4th grade students with creative ways to demonstrate their understanding by selecting from six student-led project options or designing their own. A project page outlines these choices, and an editable rubric allows for teacher, peer, or self-assessment.

These flexible, multimodal projects support differentiation with two versions of the project page—one offering modified options for students needing remediation and another allowing advanced learners to combine projects for a challenge. Teachers can adjust the rubric to fit grading needs.

The projects require common classroom supplies like paper, markers, and scissors, with many options available for digital completion.

The Reflecting Light and Vision science writing activity engages 4th-grade students in an informative essay exercise to reinforce their understanding of how light reflection enables vision. Designed for both print and digital formats, this low-prep activity supports virtual and in-person learning, fostering science reasoning and writing skills.

Aligned with NGSS 4-PS4-2, this resource includes teacher directions with an answer guide, project ideas, and rubrics. It offers projection and full-sized handouts with a writing prompt, student self-check, pre-writing strategy, and layout template. Half-sheet handouts provide a compact option for interactive notebooks, and a digital version in PowerPoint or Google Slides allows easy assignment in edit mode.

Ideal for cross-curricular learning, pre-test assessment, student choice projects, early finisher enrichment, extra credit, make-up work, TELPAS samples, and differentiation, this writing prompt helps students apply their knowledge in an engaging way.

The WIKI Tickets© Physical Science Set provides engaging, flexible formative assessments for 3rd–5th grade science. This set includes 37 exit tickets, each available in five formats: a full-screen projection version, three printable handouts, and an interactive digital version compatible with PowerPoint and Google Slides.

Aligned with NGSS and TEKS standards, these assessments cover key physical science topics, including forces and motion, energy transformations, evidence of energy transfer, circuits, reflecting light and vision, waves, and amplitude, wavelength, and motion. Each standard has at least one ticket, and some topics feature multiple assessments. A bonus table of contents file is included to show alignment.

WIKI Tickets© can be used in both in-person and virtual learning settings. Students can respond on printed handouts, their own paper, or digitally in a 1:1 or remote environment. These colorful, engaging assessments work as exit tickets, bellringers, or quick checks to gauge student understanding at any time.

Year-Round Resources

These year-round activities will increase your students' understanding of many middle school science topics. All of these activities are also included in the Kesler Science Membership.

Visual Data & Graphing

You're not alone if your students struggle with understanding graphs, charts, and tables. It's a skill that takes an enormous amount of practice. This resource will help students build a strong foundation in analyzing data and creating their own data visualizations.

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Bell Ringers and Warm-Ups

These middle school science bell ringers are an excellent way to engage your students as soon as they walk into your classroom. This comprehensive FULL YEAR resource includes everything you need to start off each science class with an interesting warm-up activity.

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Review Board Games

Each game board has been carefully designed to keep students engaged. There are 10 different action spaces on each board and dozens of question cards. All of the actions are related to science concepts and keep the students motivated throughout the game.

Each game is ready to play. Simply print out the board and the cards and let the students enjoy reviewing nine different units.

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Essential Questions and Standards

Below are the essential questions and standards associated with the lessons and activities included in the reflecting light and vision unit. This topic is only one of more than 100 middle school science topics included in the Kesler Science Membership.

Essential Questions

How can we model the similarities and differences between waves?
What evidence shows that waves can cause objects to move?

Standards

NGSS - 4-PS4-2 Reflecting Light & Vision