Reflection and Refraction Activities for 5th Grade Science

The Kesler Science Reflection and Refraction 5th Grade Complete 5E Lesson streamlines lesson planning, providing all the materials needed to teach a comprehensive, multi-day lesson on light’s behavior. This lesson promotes student-led learning with minimal prep time, ensuring your focus remains on fostering real student success.

Aligned with essential questions about how light energy travels and changes direction, the lesson includes differentiated materials to support diverse learners. Students engage in multimodal learning through printable or digital formats, including editable PowerPoints and Spanish translations of key resources. The lesson follows the well-established 5E model, guiding students through engagement, exploration, explanation, elaboration, and evaluation.

Students explore reflection and refraction through interactive stations that include hands-on activities, videos, research tasks, and reading passages. The lesson also offers extension activities for early finishers, as well as interactive notebook templates and assessment tools to evaluate mastery. Whether in-person or virtual, the resources are adaptable to any learning environment.

The Kesler Science Reflection and Refraction Station Lab is designed to keep 5th grade students actively engaged as they explore how light travels in straight lines and how it can be reflected or refracted. This modular, student-led activity minimizes prep time while encouraging independent learning. Students will experiment with light, demonstrating key concepts of reflection and refraction through hands-on activities.

The lab includes nine stations, each offering differentiated activities. The first set of input stations—Explore It!, Research It!, Read It!, and Watch It!—exposes students to new concepts using diverse, multimodal methods, such as experiments, research tasks, reading passages, and videos. Students have the freedom to choose how they engage with the material, promoting personalized learning.

For output, students demonstrate their understanding through tasks like organizing concepts, sketching models, and writing responses. The lab includes an assessment station and a bonus challenge station for early finishers, offering extension activities to deepen their understanding. Designed for flexibility, this lab is fully adaptable to in-person or virtual environments, ensuring every student can succeed.

The Kesler Science Reflection and Refraction Student Choice Projects offer 5th grade students the freedom to select from a variety of project options. With six different student-led project choices and an option to "design your own," students can choose the format that best fits their output style. The accompanying grading rubric allows for assessments by teachers, peers, or even the students themselves, fostering a sense of ownership in the learning process.

These projects are highly flexible and dynamic, with opportunities for modification to suit a range of learning needs. Teachers can adjust the rubric, and the multimodal nature of the projects lets students explore their understanding through creative and personalized methods. The resource includes nine project options, a "design your own" choice, teacher guidance, and editable rubric pages to evaluate key areas such as vocabulary, concepts, presentation, and accuracy.

Designed for a range of learners, these projects are differentiated to support students needing remediation, with three options tailored to assist them. For advanced learners, teachers can assign a combination of projects to challenge them further. The projects require minimal materials—often just basic classroom supplies like paper and markers, though some models may require crafting materials. Many projects can also be completed digitally, making it easy to adapt for remote learning.

The Kesler Science Physical Science Interactive Notebook bundle engages elementary students in 13 essential physical science topics with both print and digital formats. This versatile resource supports traditional classrooms, 1:1 environments, and distance learning, ensuring all students can actively participate.  

The digital version includes an interactive PowerPoint that can be uploaded to Google Slides and various LMS platforms, with reflection pages, note-taking spaces, teacher answer keys, and a modified version for accommodations. The paper version provides blank and pre-filled templates, along with color photos for guidance.  

Topics range from properties of matter and energy use to gravitational force and circuits. Whether used for interactive learning, differentiation, or student reflection, this notebook bundle makes science more engaging and accessible.