Energy Sciences

Summary of Unit Outcomes

Time Expectations and Strategies

At LMB, teachers of core subjects see our students daily for 70 minutes. After the various interruptions typical to any school, I can expect to see my students roughly 300 minutes per week. This unit covers multiple strands of the Virginia Earth Science curriculum and, as such, will require multiple weeks to complete. The first section, dealing with the origin of coal and the geologic history of Virginia will begin in November and will likely take 5-7 days. The second and third sections, where we focus on energy resources will begin directly afterwards, but will take longer, due to the amount of information there is to cover. In all, I expect the entire unit to be roughly 3 weeks in length. However, I’ll note that there may be days when I pause to update students on the other content included in our standards.

As my students are high-achieving, I expect them to do a fair amount of reading. I will assign short – 1-2 page – readings to my students with a guided note sheet as homework. On the following day, we will spend time discussing the reading and making sure that the information I want for them to receive was clear. I have found that they are fond of group work and do well in the small-group setting, and often employ the Jigsaw strategy to disseminate the information to all students. This is especially effective for multi-part topics like renewable energy, where I can assign small groups to read about a certain sub-topic and then report back to the larger group. It cuts down on any one student feeling overwhelmed by reading, and allows them to take the role of teacher, which many of them enjoy. 

Deliverable Outcomes and Activities

Each section of my unit will have at least one project, investigation, or in class assignment associated with it.

Part 1: Our Energy Past

The first section, related to Virginia’s geologic past, involves a deep dive into the world of 350 mya. An important part of the Virginia standards is that students understand how certain organisms, known as “index fossils” serve as markers of a time period, existing neither before nor after a certain geologic moment. The project for this section will involve each making a fake social media profile of one of these organisms, including a picture and description of the organism. Students will have access to books, Chromebooks, and laptops in my classroom, and will have the option of creating these profiles in either digital or paper format.

Part 2: Our Energy Present

The second section deals with the extraction of coal and natural gas and has a number of components. As a class, we will test the energy output of three grades of coal and make connections to the decisions made by energy companies in terms of usage. Additionally, we will take field trips to a nearby coal-fired power plant and historical site of coal mining. We’ll prepare for these trips by reading documents on the pros and cons of coal as a fuel source and on the history of mining in Central Virginia. After the trips, students will have to write reflections, answering specific questions about the power plant and mines.

Finally, as a culminating activity for the second section, we will engage in a “Crash Debate,” which is a method I modified from an IB colleague in Asheville, NC. In short, students will prepare arguments on the pro and con sides of fracking in Virginia, based upon a series of readings I will suggest and on any other source they can find and clear with me. They will then engage in a tournament-style series of debates where they have to flip a coin to determine who argues which side and where classmates act as judges. It is the best kind of on-task chaos.

The debate rules that I will provide to my students are as follows:

1. You go home and research both sides of our chosen topic – the “pros” and “cons.”
2. As you research, separate your arguments by themes. For example, if our topic was Deep Sea Oil Drilling, some Pro Themes might be: energy independence from the Middle East, jobs, and modern safe techniques of extraction.
3. On separate notecards, write summarized arguments for each theme. Make sure to cite your sources!
4. Bring at least 3 Pro and 3 Con notecards to class. You will hand these in for a grade, so make sure you have done the work!
5. Each student will be assigned a letter and be separated into groups of 3. In each trio, there will be 2 debaters and 1 judge.
6. The debaters will flip a coin to decide who is arguing pro and who is arguing con.
7. One side will begin the debate with one theme card. You will have one minute to present an argument that supports your position using only one of your notecards. The opposition will have one minute to rebut. The original debater will then have a 30 second response followed by a 30 second response by the second debater. You are required to stay on topic and not introduce topics from other cards unless they are related to the original topic presented.
8. Repeat step 7, except now the other debater gets to choose a topic.
9. During the debate, the judge will act as time-keeper and also non-biased scorekeeper (DO NOT GIVE YOUR FRIEND MORE POINTS JUST BECAUSE YOU LIKE HIM/HER).
10. The judge will keep a scorecard where she/he puts tick marks for each side every time a good point is made or a valid source is cited. Remember, it is in your best interest to be unbiased, as the person you are judging will end up judging you!
11. After the round is finished, the judge will announce a winner. The winner will go on to a new debate, the loser will become a judge, and the judge will become a debater. Continue the process, following the tournament bracket until all players are eliminated and a Supreme Debate Winner is crowned.

Part 3: Designing our Energy Future

For the third section, students will split into groups and I will assign/they will choose a different renewable resource to research. Each group will have to prepare an informational advertisement about their resource that includes an overall description of the method of energy generation, the associated pros and cons, and Virginia’s potential in regards to this resource. If time permits, we will research and debate offshore wind in Virginia, using the same Crash Debate style format as in section 2.

As a fun design activity, I will provide student groups with materials and time to create the most effective wind turbines that they can and we will test them in our schoolyard. We will use the basic format as in the PBS windmills lesson found in the teacher resource section. Although the activity was designed for elementary school, it can be easily scaled to middle school by relying more heavily on the students to come up with their own designs.

IB Practices

Lucille Brown Middle School employs the International Baccalaureate (IB) model of teaching and learning. There are many aspects to the IB method of teaching that can be thoroughly explored through the International Baccalaureate Organization website. In short, IB stresses an inquiry driven curriculum in which students are encouraged to demonstrate a series of character traits, from risk-taking to reflection. Teachers design units and lessons that require students to examine a topic from a variety of different lenses, known as Global Contexts. For example, a unit on energy viewed through the lens of Scientific and Technological Innovation might focus heavily on the mechanics of extraction and models of the machinery used to harness the energy, while the same unit viewed using the lens of Globalization and Sustainability would be more focused on the worldwide availability of resources and how societies best manage their supply.

There are many other components of the IB pedagogy, including specialized rubrics and grades, overarching “statements of inquiry” that frame the focus of a unit, cross-cutting concepts that permeate multiple units, and specific cognitive skills – “approaches to learning” -  that students need to work on throughout their years of study. Ultimately, the IB method is a well organized and semi-prescribed model of inquiry-based and constructive learning that has its own vocabulary for many concepts that would be present in the planning and teaching of any highly-effective classroom.