5E Lesson Plan: Heart Rate

Group Members: Hanna Linford, Amanda Lima, Rachel Maxwell, Megan Beck

Name of activity:
The Human Heart Rate

Questions to Pose:
What affects heart rate?
What causes your heart rate to beat the fastest?
What is your resting heart rate? Can it change?
How fast does your heart return to its resting rate after different activities?

Standards:
NGSS: 4-LS1-1 From Molecules to Organisms: Structures and Processes
Idaho Math Standards: 3.MD.1, 3.MD.3
ISTE: 1.3.c: Students curate information from digital resources using a variety of tools and
methods to create collections of artifacts that demonstrate meaningful connections or
conclusions.

Learning Outcome:
● Students will be able to describe what affects the human heart rate (environment, age,
physical health).

STEM focus:
The Science of the human body and how it functions. Students will work as a team to discover
and find ways to decide what affects heart rate. Students will use their measurement skills to
gather data and then represent it visually.

Science Connections:
Students will recognize the structure and function of the heart inside the human body.

Technology Connections:
Students will become familiar with and use stopwatches to accurately record data.
Students will use paper & pencil or online sources to graph data.

Engineering Connections:
Students will work as a team to figure out what variables affect our heart rate.
Students will create their own data table in order to answer the question, “What affects
heart rate?”

Math Connections:
Students will use comparative math and measurement skills to record data and draw
conclusions.
SIOP Focus:
Interaction - Students will be discussing ideas, answering questions, and communicating in
order to discover what factors affect heart rate.

Literacy Connection:
W.4.1 Write opinion pieces on topics or texts, supporting a point of view with reasons and
information.

Writing Focus:
Students will participate in a free write about heart rate. They will have the opportunity to
describe what they learned during their lab experience and explain specific factors that affect
heart rate.

Differentiation:
Students may be in a partnership and divide the work if the student is not physically able to. The
student who isn’t able to physically do the testing can be a reporter.

Description of the Activity:

Students will collaborate and discuss what factors might affect heart rate. Students will test
some of their ideas and record their data. Once all data has been collected, students will create
a visual representation to display to the rest of the class.

Materials:
Stopwatches, paper, pencil, laptops.

Instructions for the teacher to follow:

Engage (Amanda):
What kind of physical activities do students participate in? Are there physical activities
that raise your heart rate higher than others? Ask students how they feel after going upstairs to
the third floor of the Hinckley building. Think about what kind of factors affect your heart rate.

Students can learn how to feel their heart beat, by watching this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tF9-jLZNM10
Students could interview a registered nurse or doctor (face-to-face or remotely).

Explore:
Students will get together in groups and receive one stopwatch. It will be up to the
students to collaborate and apply their prior knowledge to ask questions, test out ideas, and
collect data about heart rate.
Here are some examples of what students might do to explore this topic:
● Locate their pulse
 ● Pick a unit of measurement
● Ask questions
● Discuss prior experiences with heart rate
● Measure their resting heart rate
● Measure their heart rate before and after physical activity
● Measure their heart rate outside vs. inside
● Measure the heart rate of someone older/younger
● Measure heart rate in areas colder/warmer.

Explain:
Students will work together in groups to complete the experiment of finding what affects
your heart rate. The teacher will ask the students to go outside of the classroom to determine
how they want to collect their data. They will then discuss their data and findings together with
other groups to determine what some common and not so common factors are.
Students may use online resources to find different ways to test their heart rate.

Elaborate:
Students will work in small groups and test what they think affects their heart rate.
Students may do a variety of activities and record the data until they have run out of time.
Students will collaborate with their groups about the data that they collected and any factors that
may have affected the results.

Evaluate:
Walk around asking questions to deepen thinking and evaluate learning (formative)
Have students discuss their data and findings with other groups to compare data and
make conclusions about the posed question. (summative)

Questions you might use to discuss:

How does age affect your heart rate?
What are some factors that may affect your heart rate?
Did the location affect your heart rate?
Did temperature affect your heart rate?

Addendum:
What are some other activities that we could do to increase our heart rate? What are some
things outside of class that we could do to test this? Students might discuss different activities
like swimming, running, jumping on a trampoline, or riding their bikes.

Learn more about the different parts of the heart and what makes the heartbeat the way that it
does.
What is the heart?- https://kidshealth.org/en/kids/heart.html
Are there things that you can do to make your heart beat better?
Video to learn more about the heart- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vot7V7_2UoI
Do we have a maximum heart rate? - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0on5LV3k26o