Activities and Strategies
For this unit, the students will have an Energy Journal in which they will enter key vocabulary, concepts and ideas; they will also be guided to answer questions, draw and/or glue images about the topics we discuss, and prepare summaries and short essays. The journal, altogether with the students' participation, and doing the demonstrations, will be the basis for their self-evaluation and teacher's assessments.
Initially, I want students to gain awareness about the current levels of energy usage in their own homes. To that effect, I gave the incoming fifth graders a Home Energy Usage Chart at the end of the previous school year. This document lists common appliances used at home, their typical wattage, the average monthly kWh (kilowatt-hour), and the typical monthly cost. During the summer months, they would have selected from the chart those appliances present in their home and created their own table; this new table includes the monthly and yearly costs of their appliances. They were also instructed to find the average cost per day/appliance to then multiply the result by the number of vacation days; after these calculations, they will have a final number which represents energy consumption per appliance while they were at home.
At the beginning of the school year, the students will have their own Home Energy Usage Chart which will be made from their observations and data collection done during the summer months. We will establish several conclusions from this first inquiry such as that without energy there wouldn't be much going on in their homes, and that energy has a daily cost. We will also study the following units: watts (W), kilowatts (kW), and kilowatt-hour (kWh).
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