Teaching sound waves to middle school students is SO much fun! There are so many sound waves activities to do! They love noise, right? They make it all day long. Just kidding, kind of! This is one of those topics that students do find a lot of interest in. They love listening to music and also they love to hear themselves talk.
Ok, I’ll stop joking now, but really, this topic can be a lot of fun and there are so many things that you can do so that students will have a blast. Personally, each time that this topic comes about, I’m pretty excited to teach it!
In this post, I will share with you how you can hype your students up for the unit on sound waves and help them to wonder. Then, I will share with you some interactive lessons that you can use to help your students overcome overwhelm with all of the concepts and vocabulary associated with this unit. Finally, I will share some ideas to help widen their knowledge on this topic, taking them above and beyond the minimum of what they need to know. These are ideas to bring the WOW Factor to Your Science Classroom!
I’m so excited to share these sound waves activities!
Sound Waves Activities for Kids – an Introduction
Your students hear sounds on a daily basis. They probably begin their morning hearing an alarm or their parents waking them up. Your students probably blast their music after school and hear their phone ding every 2 seconds!
Your students probably love all of those sounds but may have never thought about what makes those sounds travel or how sound works.
Here are 2 activities you can use in your classroom to get your students excited about learning about sound waves!
Learn more about these specific stations in the Bright in the Middle Shop or on TPT!
Sound Wave Activities – Lab Stations
Stations are a great way to get your students up and out of their seats to explore! You can set up stations around the room before you learn the content to allow your students to make observations about what is happening.
Here are some station ideas:
- Get two cups, 2 balloons, 2 rubber bands and some salt. You will cut the top part of a balloon and stretch it over the top of the cup. Tie the rubber band around to secure it more. You will do the same for the other cup. Place a pinch of salt on one of the cups. Now, hold the other cup, without the salt, at an angle over the one with the salt and pinch the balloon and let it go. You’ll hear the sound and see the salt bounce! That’s the sound waves traveling!
- Another easy station to do is just have your students place their hand on their throat and hum. They can feel the sound vibrations!
- You can also get two cups and string and make a telephone. Kids love this!
- Get two tuning forks of different sizes. Have students tap each one on their desk. Then, students can repeat this, but after they tap it, dip it in a bowl of water. You’ll see the waves created from the vibrations.
- Get an empty tray and wrap 3 rubber bands of different thickness around it. Which produces the highest sound?
- Go out in the hallway and have one student go around the corner. Have them to say something. Can you hear it?
- Fill one zip-lock bag up with air, one with water, and the third with rice. Place your ear against each bag lying on the desk, then tap the desk with a metal spoon. What happens? This is great for introducing how sound waves travel.
You can choose to do all of these, or just a few. You could always choose 3 and have 2 sets of those going at once so that students can explore those 3 different stations, but not have an overwhelming number of students.
These could be used as a WONDER or WIDEN strategy!
NC State Wolf Ears
If you’ve been following me for any amount of time, you probably know that I love NC State University! My husband attended there, and I received both of my graduate degrees from there. We are a wolfpack family for sure!
One of the treasured places to visit is right in front of the library. It’s the NC State wolf ears. They are sculptures in the shape of parabolas. There are 2. One person can sit in one, and one person can sit in the other and have a conversation.
Show your students pictures of this awesome NC State addition. Explain what you can do in them. Then, let your students predict how it works. After the discussion, you can show them this video to get their minds wondering!
If you are ever on campus, check it out!
Sound Waves Lessons for Middle School
Now that your students are showing more interest in sound waves, it’s time to dive deeper into the content, focusing on vocabulary and important concepts.
One of the most awesome additions you can add to your sound waves lesson plan are interactive lessons!
Interactive lessons are great for breaking content up into smaller chunks so that it is easier to digest before moving on. In between these chunks, there are embedded activities where students can further process the information they were just given.
There are 3 awesome lessons that you can choose to add into your sound wave lessons.
Sound Waves
The first interactive lesson covers sound waves, sound, how sound travel through waves, how sound needs a medium to travel, compression and rarefaction, amplitude, loudness, intensity, frequency, infrasound and ultrasounds, echolocation, and so much more. Time to learn about how sound waves work!
This lesson answers questions such as:
- Are sound waves vibrations?
- Why are sound waves important?
The interactive activities that are included are an anticipation guide, drag-and-drop activities, exploring outside resources, answering critical thinking questions, and much more!
You can learn more about this sound waves lesson here. You can also find this on TPT.
How Sound Travels
Another great lesson is on how sound travels. This lesson covers how sound travels through solids, liquids, and gases, the speed of sound, how temperature affects speed, and so much more!
This lesson answers questions such as:
- Where do sound waves travel faster?
- Which do sound waves travel fastest through?
The interactive activities that are included include a KWL, exploring outside resources, typing in the text box, drag-and-drop activities, and more!
You can learn more about the how sound travels lesson here. You can also find this on TPT.
The Human Ear and Hearing
Another great addition to your sound waves activities and lessons in the human ear and hearing lesson. This lesson dives deeper into how we, as humans, hear sound. This lesson covers the human ear structures, how sound travels from the source to our brain, and common ear problems.
You can learn more about the human ear and hearing lesson here. You can also find this on TPT.
Sound Wave Activities to Widen Knowledge
Now that your students have learned a lot of vocabulary words and important concepts about sound waves, it’s now time for them to show off their knowledge and expand upon it! Here are 2 ideas that you can do with your students. You can add this to your list of sound waves project ideas!
Create an Instrument
I love to allow my students to show off their creativity. One of the things that you can do in this unit is to allow them to make an instrument. They can make kazoos, stringed instruments, xylophone-type instruments, and so much more!
If you plan enough in advance for this sound waves STEM activity, you can let students start brainstorming and collecting materials beforehand. If you are a last-minute person (not judging, because that can be me!), you can gather whatever your materials you have and see what your students can do!
There are so many videos online that you can refer to for inspiration. Videos by Bruce Yeany are great. You can have your students explore these for inspiration.
You can grade your students on:
- creative
- ability to change amplitude
- teamwork
- quality of the instrument
- extra credit: Can they play a song?!
Sound Waves Memes
Don’t have time to go in an make an instrument? Have your students create memes! This is a great sound waves activity you can do in a short class period. Depending on how much time they have, they can create 1-5 memes if they wish. They must create a meme based on something that they’ve learned about during the sound waves lessons!
This can be so much fun, and students are so creative.
Which sound waves activities will you choose for your lesson plans?
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