Classroom Activities
Hook/Phenomenon
In order to spark student curiosity, students will participate in an Oil Spill laboratory activity. The reason I am having students conduct this activity at the beginning is I want students’ mindsets to begin thinking critically about important issues that could arise from something we depend on in our daily lives. “Oil spills, like most environmental issues, become very political. Many questions are asked, and blame is given.”51 Students will work in groups in an inquiry atmosphere. On the table, students will have access to different tools in which they will be tasked with cleaning up an oil spill. Examples of the tools could include aluminum pie plates, cotton balls, spoons, dispersant, plastic cups, feathers, absorbent pads, and Q-tips. This is in no way an exhaustive list but a good starting point. The objective of the activity will be to simulate a surface oil spill and test different materials for their effectiveness of oil cleanup as well as oil recovery. A variety of both natural and manmade materials will be tested. The goal will be to draw a conclusion as to the impact an oil spill could have on the environment, the economy, and living organisms. An example of a data table students will use to document their activity is below in Figure 6.
Figure 6: Example data table for Oil Spill Lab
With this activity, students will then research two major oil spills the BP Deepwater Horizon spill and the Exxon Valdez spill. They will then complete a Claims, Evidence, and Response (CER) sheet to defend or argue the claim that drilling for oil is harmful to the environment. They will use evidence from the lab activity and the articles on the two different major oil spills. The goal will be for students to start thinking about what consequences, positive and negative, do different sources of energy provide.
Claims, Evidence, Reasoning
Claims, evidence, reasoning strategy is important in the science classroom as it increases the exposure to inquiry students will receive. They are easy to model, easy to assess due to the use of rubrics, and cause students to think about how the evidence supports their claim. At the same time, different subject areas can be tied in such as English where students are focusing on the structure of an essay and appropriate citation of evidence.
Energy Museum Exhibit
Second, after sparking student’s curiosity, students will now be tasked with developing a museum exhibit that will start their studies on renewable and nonrenewable energy. The focus for the project is to teach others about the impacts on the environment, economy, and living organisms. The process for this project will consist of research to develop background knowledge, addition of information from current events, production of a product that can range from a poster, website, 3-D model – the possibilities are endless. Some questions/prompts students will be engaging with include: be able to describe the process and pathway in which their energy goes from source to power plant; what are some of the ecological benefits/consequences of their energy source; what are some of the waste products produced, what is done with them, and can they be recycled; expected time frame of energy source in terms of how long it should last until extraction ceases; economic benefits and consequences; and associated laws such as the clean air act, energy policy act, Kyoto policy, pollution prevention act, etc. One of the most important parts of this project is that the product is engaging and interactive. Other students will be learning from the exhibit, and it is vitally important that students are doing something when they visit the exhibit and that the exhibit communicates the key points of their topic in a way that is educational. I like to make this engaging for the students and for others in the school building. Before presentation day (this can take multiple days), I will share the news of a museum exhibit with the administration, self-contained special education classes, and other teachers in the building. This helps in increasing a sense of ownership within the students and helps increase the school wide culture of belonging.
Renewable Energy Stations
After spending time deepening their knowledge of energy, students now will divert their attention towards a world problem. Students will be posed with the issues that surround energy and how those issues might affect secluded islands. As a class, we will spend time at stations building models of a windmill, hydroelectric model, and a solar panel. From here, students will then work in pairs to prepare a debate defending their choice of renewable energy for their choice of an island. Students will be expected to include in their debate the cost of transitioning from nonrenewable energy to majority renewable energy, the infrastructure the island already provides, and potential conflicts of interest this transition may have. At the same time, they will need to include the benefits of switching to their proposed renewable energy source and the positive effects this will have on the island in the short-term and long-term.
Comments: