Day 1 - Distribute energy poll (attached) and give students sufficient time to fill it out.
Purpose is to stimulate discussion of energy topics and create a discrepant event. Tabulate and discuss results. How can we justify being in favor of one thing and then turn around and be completely opposed to it the very next question? Assign vocabulary due day 4. (attached)
Day 2 - Review concepts of force, power, work, efficiency, kinetic and potential energy, and other forms of energy. This will be review from chapters 4 and 5 of Science Explorer: Motion, Forces, and Energy. (Prentice Hall, 2000). Show Bill Nye "Energy" video.
Assign Questions on pages 109, 115, 145, 153, 162.
Day 3 - Demonstration of work and power with student help. Have students step on and down on a board, vary height of board, time to step up and so on to show how work and power are related. Good to tie in kinetic and potential energy with this activity. Correct questions.
Day 4 - Finish correcting chapter questions and collect vocabulary. Assign reading from "Our House" (Oregonian supplement, April 18, 2000) pages 18-21.
Assign questions (attached), they are due day 6.
Day 5 - Solar cooker lab (hope it's sunny). Lab is from Double Helix web site, attached here.
Day 6 - Discuss Questions from "Our House". Talk about energy conservation at home. Hand out home audit (attached) and have students predict how well their family will do. Take home audit and complete with family. Audit is from The Alliance to Save Energy.
Day 7 - Discuss home audit, what can their family do to improve their energy use?
Show video "Energy Crisis" (from "Town Hall", KATU channel 2, March 17, 2000).
Assign Reading from unit 4, chapter 1 in "Accent on Science" (Merrill Pub. Co. 1983) regarding Fossil Fuels. Assign chapter review questions page 119. They are due day 9.
Day 8 - Solar lab on rate at which different type of surfaces, substances absorb and release solar energy (attached). It is from the Solar Now web site.
Day 9 - Discuss results of solar lab and show how they relate to passive solar collection in homes, use interrogative questions. Correct chapter 1 questions. Introduce concept of renewable energy and assign reading of Chapter 2 from Accent on Science: Energy Alternatives.
Chapter review questions on page 133 are due day 11.
Show laser disc "Renewable Energy" (Washington County ESD).
Day 10 - Start Wind Shape Lab. This lab is designed as an inquiry based project. Students will design their own windmills based on the example (attached) from the Wind Power.org web site. The question given to them will be, "What design of a wind turbine would be the best to lift the greatest amount of weight?" They will be encouraged to experiment with different shapes, sizes, materials used and anything else they can think of. Then we will have a competition to see which product lifts the greatest number of newton weights when a constant wind blows on it. Modification and testing will be allowed before final tests.
Day 11 - Continue lab and testing. Write lab reports to be evaluated using the state scoring guide on inquiry. Lab report due at end of unit.
Day 12 - Introduce debate research assignment. This will be a research assignment in which students will divide up into teams of three. I will pick 6 team leaders and allow them to pick two team mates. Then by lottery they will pick topics of fossil fuels, nuclear, geothermal, wind, solar, and hydroelectric. The debate topic is, "Which energy source should we focus on as source for the future?". One person will present their energy source and argue it's merits. They will be given 3 minutes to speak. A second team member will act to rebut the other energy sources and defend other negative rebuttals. They have 2 minutes. The third team member is the campaign manager. They will be responsible to produce campaign slogans and posters to post in the classroom and school. After the debate has concluded a vote will be taken to decide the future. Each student will be allowed to vote for two (that way they can vote for their own and preserve their own interests, but still vote for another source that their conscience dictates).
Students will be graded as a team on their collection of facts, their ability to present and defend their source and the accuracy and effectiveness of their posters (based on a scoring guide). Posters will be required to have at least two verifiable facts on them and a listing of the sources of those facts. The state scoring guide for speech will be modified to evaluate the debates.
Students who are not selected on a team will act as "reporters". Their task will be to do research and develop at least three questions for each team. At the conclusion of the debate and before the election, they will ask their questions of each team. Probing, thoughtful questions will be strongly encouraged. These students will be graded on the questions which they will then turn in.
Sources for this project will come from the resource center which has a fairly good selection of books specific to renewable energy and the web page I created as part of the group project. I will work with Rosa (media director) to develop the web site further.
Day 13 & 14 - Research and preparation of campaign.
Day 15 - Debate and election.
This completes the unit. All the internet sources cited above come from the web page "Useful Renewable Web Sites for Middle School Teachers" which will soon be posted at the Tigard-Tualatin district web site.
Assessment for the unit will include homework assignments (20%), vocabulary (10%), home audit (10%), participation in the two minor labs (20%), and the wind energy lab and debate evaluations being 40% of the grade.
This unit meets the following benchmarks. Nature of Science - inquiry, Physical Science - energy and energy conversions. It can be used to evaluate the speech benchmark as well. This unit also meets one of the Tigard-Tualatin goals for incorporating technology.