1. Teacher Guide
This lesson is designed to teach kids to ask a critical thinking question that you can’t just put into a search box to solve. To do that, we encourage them with smaller questions that search can help them answer. Make sure that you read the notes for each slide: they not only give you teaching tips but also provide answers and hints so you can help the kids if they are having trouble.
Remember, you can always send feedback to the Bing in the Classroom team at You can learn more about the program at bing.com/classroom and follow the daily lessons on the Microsoft Educator Network.
Want to extend today’s lesson? Consider using Skype in the Classroom to arrange for your class to chat with another class in today’s location, take a Skype lesson on today’s topic, or invite a guest speaker to expand on today’s subject. And if you are using Windows 8, the panoramas in the MSN Travel App are great teaching tools. We have thousands of other education apps available on Windows here.
Nell Bang-Jensen is a teacher and theater artist living in Philadelphia, PA. Her passion for arts education has led her to a variety of roles including developing curriculum for Philadelphia Young Playwrights and teaching at numerous theaters and schools around the city. She works with playwrights from ages four to ninety on developing new work and is especially interested in alternative literacies and theater for social change. A graduate of Swarthmore College, she currently works in the Artistic Department of the Wilma Theater and, in addition to teaching, is a freelance actor and dramaturg. In 2011, Nell was named a Thomas J. Watson Fellow and spent her fellowship year traveling to seven countries studying how people get their names.
This lesson is designed to teach the Common Core State Standard: Reading—Informational Text
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.2.3 Describe the connection between a series of historical events, scientific ideas or concepts, or steps in technical procedures in a text.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.2.5 Know and use various text features (e.g., captions, bold print, subheadings, glossaries, indexes, electronic menus, icons) to locate key facts or information in a text efficiently.

2. What causes fire, like the blue flames pictured here?
© Martin Rietze/Alamy
Having this up as kids come in is a great settle down activity. You can start class by asking them for thoughts about the picture or about ideas on how they could solve the question of the day.

3. What causes fire, like the blue flames pictured here?
To the vexation of volcanologists, geologists, and science enthusiasts the world over, many discussions of Kawah Ijen volcano incorrectly refer to glowing flows as “blue lava.” Kawah Ijen, on East Java, Indonesia, spews super-heated sulfur, which emerges from fissures in the volcano’s crater as sulfuric gas, not lava. When the gas reacts with oxygen in the air, it combusts, creating these dazzling neon-blue flames. The blue flames are blazing nearly all the time, but are visible only at night.
Miners from local villages make the dangerous trek into Kawah Ijen during daylight, where they harvest the cooled sulfur in large chunks, carrying the valuable ore back up and out of the volcano. It’s dangerous work, because the sulfur smoke and vapors are dangerous to inhale. Still, the work continues and some miners have started side businesses as tour guides for brave tourists interested in seeing Kawah Ijen up close.
Depending on time, you can either have students read this silently to themselves, have one of them read out loud, or read it out loud yourself.

4. What causes fire, like the blue flames pictured here?1
Video Search/Thinking
Watch a video that explains what fire is made of. Can you describe this in your own words? 2
Web Search
What is the chemical reaction that causes fire? What happens in this reaction? 3
What are the three things that fire requires to burn? 4
What is a flame made of and why can flames be different colors? 5
Web Search/Thinking
What are some examples of fuel? What is the “fuel” helping to form the blue forms that are pictured?
There are a couple of ways to use this slide, depending on how much technology you have in your classroom. You can have students find answers on their own, divide them into teams to have them do all the questions competitively, or have each team find the answer to a different question and then come back together. If you’re doing teams, it is often wise to assign them roles (one person typing, one person who is in charge of sharing back the answer, etc.)

5. What causes fire, like the blue flames pictured here?5
Minutes
You can adjust this based on how much time you want to give kids. If a group isn’t able to answer in 5 minutes, you can give them the opportunity to update at the end of class or extend time.

6. What causes fire, like the blue flames pictured here?1
Video Search/Thinking
Watch a video that explains what fire is made of. Can you describe this in your own words? 2
Web Search
What is the chemical reaction that causes fire? What happens in this reaction? 3
What are the three things that fire requires to burn? 4
What is a flame made of and why can flames be different colors? 5
Web Search/Thinking
What are some examples of fuel? What is the “fuel” helping to form the blue forms that are pictured?

7. What causes fire, like the blue flames pictured here?1
Video Search/Thinking
Watch a video that explains what fire is made of. Can you describe this in your own words?
(Possible Search Queries: “Bing/Videos: for kids, what is fire made of?”, “Bing/Videos: for kids, what causes fire?”).
Students should watch a video, such as the one found here: and then articulate in their own words what fire is made of. Answers will vary. For example, after watching the video students may explain that fire results from the combustion of organic material and oxygen. When a flame blows cleanly, like a gas flame, heat excites molecules to release a light that is pale blue. When the fuel causing the fires isn’t as pure as gas and doesn’t entirely burn (like coal fire or wood fire), the blue particles are still there but are overpowered by particles of soot and smoke that are glowing red. The video also explains that the shape of flames is determined by gravity. (If a flame burned in zero gravity, it would just spread out, instead of making that specific upwards shape that we know).

8. What causes fire, like the blue flames pictured here?2
Web Search
What is the chemical reaction that causes fire? What happens in this reaction?
(Possible Search Queries: “for kids, what causes fire?”, “for kids, chemical reaction that causes fire”).
From
Fire is the result of a chemical reaction, called combustion. At a certain point in the combustion reaction, called the ignition point, flames are produced.

9. What causes fire, like the blue flames pictured here?3
Web Search
What are the three things that fire requires to burn?
(Possible Search Queries: “for kids, what causes fire?”, “for kids, what is required for fire to burn?”).
From
The Fire Triangle is a simple way of understanding the factors of fire. Each side of the triangle represents one of the three ingredients needed to have a fire – oxygen, heat, and fuel – demonstrating the interdependence of these ingredients in creating and sustaining fire. When there is not enough heat generated to sustain the process, when the fuel is exhausted, removed, or isolated, or when oxygen supply is limited, then a side of the triangle is broken and the fire will die.

10. What causes fire, like the blue flames pictured here?4
Web Search
What is a flame made of and why can flames be different colors?
(Possible Search Queries: “for kids, what is a flame made of?”, “for kids, why are flames different colors?”).
From
When you see a flame, you are seeing something that is glowing with a certain color. Heat naturally causes things to glow. If you heat up a piece of iron hot enough, it will glow red. Heat it more and it glows orange or yellow. The temperature controls the color. In the yellow part of a candle flame, you are seeing tiny particles of soot that are hot enough to glow yellow. In a blue flame, two things are happening. First, the flame is very hot. Second, it is gas molecules that are glowing rather than pieces of soot. Very hot gas molecules glow blue.

11. What causes fire, like the blue flames pictured here?5
Web Search/Thinking
What are some examples of fuel? What is the “fuel” helping to form the blue forms that are pictured?
(Possible Search Queries: “for kids, what fuel can be used for fire?”, “for kids, fuel for fire”).
From
Different types of fuel include coal, oil and wood.
Students should understand that in the flames pictured, the “fuel” that’s causing the fire is actually gas. This pure form of fuel is what causes the flames to glow blue.

12. What causes fire, like the blue flames pictured here?
Students should pull together the information gathered to understand that fire is caused by a chemical reaction called combustion that occurs when three ingredients (oxygen, heat and fuel) interact. In the blue flames pictured, we know that gas is the “fuel” of this particular reaction. Very hot gas molecules glow blue, whereas in fires caused by less clean forms of fuel (such as wood or coal), the blue light is overwhelmed by a red or orange flame caused by particles of soot and smoke.