Topic: Renewable Energy

This week our 4th grade class will be learning all about renewable energy! Please be prepared to talk about all the different renewable energies on Monday.

Monday we will be learning what renewable energy is. Today we will learn about the 5 main renewable energy sources and how they capture and produce energy for homes around the world.

The activities that we will do today will involve a worksheet on renewable energy sources and matching them to where they would be best put for the maximum storage and energy potential. This would include environments as well as what part of local places they would maximize the way these systems work. Along with the worksheet activity I would set up a classroom with environments that would be best suited for renewable energy sources, with this I will have groups of students do a scavenger hunt to figure out what renewable energy source they are and what environment they should go stand by to represent they renewable energy source they had to find. What I want to achieve with this lesson and activity will be the learning of the 5 types of new energy sources as well as the environments in which we can collect those new energy resources. This will be shown by my students when the show that they can write at least 3 of the renewable energy sources on their worksheet and have a 70% chance of accuracy in the scavenger hunt. This will help the students understand the technologies and resources used to capture and used the natural resources that the planet provides for us. This will teach the students in multiple ways what renewable energy is and where it can be used for capture. This will help the students get up and move around and be able to use that higher order thinking process to figure out what renewable source they are and where the technology should be placed for maximum efficiency. This gets the students involved physically in their learning. Today we will be using systems thinking, because our class is using systems thinking to think about how new energy is stored and used effectively to help create a more sustainable environment.

Tuesday we will be learning what non renewable energy is. We will be learning about the pros and cons of non renewable energy today. Why are these sources non renewable? Why are they considered dangerous for our environment?

Since there are a lot fewer non renewable sources than renewable sources we could not modify the activity from yesterday into today. After learning about the pros and cons of non renewable sources we will get in groups and have the students write a story of their choice including some sort of pro or con of non renewable sources and then be able to act it out in front of the class. This will be based on the previous knowledge we have gone over about non renewable sources. This will test if the student effectively knows the differences of how we use non renewable sources. This will help the students that like to write stories and those who like to make a play. How I will know that my students are understanding the information in the lesson is when the students have accurate information presented in their plays. We will be using futures thinking when going through our lesson for this day. This is because we will be thinking about what our environment would be like if we used all the fossil fuels. We are thinking of what our future will look like this way.

Wednesday is a day of discovery and using the interactive resources provided to solidify what we have gone over previous to this day. This will help test the students knowledge of the subject and help them prepare for the project coming up later this week.

The activities that we will be doing today will be on a technical device. The students will take small and short quizzes to help them retain the information from the two previous days. This will help the more technologically inclined student to learn from using a device instead of a pencil and paper method or a physical way of learning the information presented in class this week. A successful learning of the information today will be scoring a 75% or above on the quizzes and a 50% accuracy on the other interactive activities that are presented to them in class on the computers. Students will be using strategic thinking skills to help them through these activities, including changing things to make it possible to store new energy properly. The activities I have picked for the students touch on both the understanding of new energy and fossil fuels. These activities will help the students think more strategically and critically about the environment and sustainability.

Thursday we will start to go over the project details. This day we will go over what our project is and what to expect from the project.

We will go into the details of the projects and start talking in depth about solar energy exclusively and different types of solar ovens they could make for their project. I will then have a matching game with the types of solar ovens in class. I will have made cards with the picture of the solar oven and other cards with the name type, so the students can work in their table groups to match the name to the picture of the solar oven. This will help the students connect the differences between types of solar ovens and how they work. I would like to see my students understand this activity with a 80% or above to understand the activity and project. This will help them to build their solar ovens. This will be a great learning experience for those students who learn in a more strategical way. They will learn this way because they will be doing this project on their own and using their higher order thinking process to do the project successfully. This is strategic thinking because the students have to put the knowledge they have to the test and put the pieces together a solar oven creatively to create the best results for the cooking process.

Friday we will go over the conclusions of our projects. Today we will revisit our final projects and discuss in detail what happened with our solar ovens vs our home ovens and why those things happened.

This day we will review our projects by filling out worksheets about outcomes and possible changes that would have change the outcome of the projects variables. Then I will have students draw their graph on the board to represent the differences between students solar ovens. This will be a visual activity to help those students who learn more from visuals and hands on activities. Doing this activity can help my students in math classes that they may have in the future. I would like to see my students make the graph at a 80% accuracy to see if they understand how the graph relates to the solar ovens, this will be an explanation that will be discussed by students in class during our discussion period. This review can incorporate a values think lesson into it. We will be talking about how fossil fuels and new energy effect the environment through discussions. I will learn about the values that my students have about the environment, sustainability and how the project projected their learning through the week.

What we learn this week will help the understanding of renewable and non renewable resources to build a greater understanding of how nature can support our lives in a more sustainable way. These will be tested by using interactive activities along with the end of week solar oven project. We will also learn how to build a solar oven to help cook an item of their choice and use this experiment to see how much energy the sun produces and how much coal energy provides our home with when cooking in an oven. Then the students will learn how to plot the temperature over the time on a graph to incorporate a math lesson on graphing.

The four types of learning that are part of sustainability are values thinking, systems thinking, strategic thinking, and futures thinking. These types of learning will be represented throughout our daily lessons.