Conclusion and Next Steps
The follow-up on actions taken and administrative response to students' proposals should occur within the current grading period, and continue on a regular basis at least once within each subsequent grading period. This will give the students a sense of purpose to their work, and an insight and experience with the diligence that is needed to change the current trends and infrastructure that may be dominant and resistant to change.
I addition to the above logistical follow-up on the students' unit-culminating proposals, the content will also reappear in subsequent units. Topics that will draw on the background knowledge of types of energy will be: the study of seismic waves (accumulation and release of elastic energy); mechanism for plate tectonics (heat energy transfer via radiation from the core and mantle convection); electromagnetic and sound energy are discussed in the study of distant bodies in space and the use of optic, infrared, and radio telescopes; nuclear energy of fusion within the sun and radioactive decay within Earth's core; kinetic and potential energy will appear during instruction in Astronomy as applies in the law of universal gravitation and the orbits of planets around the sun and satellites around planets; and, chemical energy may be taught within the study of biogeochemical cycles (e.g., photosynthesis and the carbon cycle).
Finally, topics from this unit will return during the culminating unit of instruction for the year. I complete the year-long study of Earth Science with instruction on Climate Change and Global Warming. The very clear connection with this unit is the correlation between the burning of fossil fuels with the excess atmospheric carbon dioxide. Students will be encouraged to draw on their understanding of fossil fuels and the alternative energy sources in discussions on both the causes of and possible solutions to the current accelerated global warming trend. In this way, the unit described in this narrative will serve as a building block to establishing one of my instructional goals for the course, which is to promote my students' critical thinking and conscious choices as consumers of both materials and ideas in their lives beyond the classroom.
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