This study addresses the low learning outcomes of elementary school students in understanding the transformation of heat energy into motion energy, particularly due to the predominance of conventional teaching methods and the limited use of concrete instructional media. It examines whether pinwheel lantern media effectively improves the learning outcomes of fourth-grade students at State Elementary School 106156 Klumpang Kebun. A quantitative approach with a quasi-experimental non-equivalent control group design was employed. The study involved 40 fourth-grade students divided into an experimental group taught using pinwheel lantern media and a control group taught using audiovisual media. Data were collected through observation, tests, and documentation and analyzed using normality, homogeneity, independent-samples t-tests, and normalized gain analysis. The findings revealed that the experimental group’s mean score increased from 57.75 on the pretest to 82.50 on the posttest. The hypothesis test yielded a significance value of 0.000 (p < 0.05), while the normalized gain reached 59.82%, indicating moderate effectiveness. These findings demonstrate that pinwheel lantern media provides an effective concrete learning medium for improving students’ understanding and learning outcomes regarding heat-to-motion energy transformation.