Overall Objectives
- Explain energy issues to parents
- Identify different energy sources and how they’re used
- Explain basics of global warming and greenhouse gases
- Define key terms relating to energy issues
- Identify and advocate strategies/options for improving energy outlook
- Identify negative environmental impacts of energy use
- Identify personal activities that create pollution
7-Week Overview, Objectives by Individual Lesson
Lesson 1
- Define energy and identify different forms
- Class time used to play introductory game, distribute parent letter, get contact info, establish classroom expectations, administer pre-assessment
Lesson 2
- Identify energy forms and transfer mechanisms
- Connect transfer mechanisms to energy industry process
- Follow energy chain/web from end uses to sun
Lesson 3
- Identify energy sources
- Define renewable energy and identify sources and renewable or non-renewable
- Rank sources by pollution and cost
Lesson 4
- Identify sources of electricity energy
- Identify these sources as renewable or no
- Compare sources based on pollution, cost, availability
Lesson 5
- Same objectives as lesson 4, for transportation
Lesson 6
- Explain the process of global warming
- Follow chain from end-use energy to global warming (identify combustion, CO2, greenhouse effect as steps)
Lesson 7
- Define efficiency
- Propose ways to improve energy efficiency personally
4-Week Module: Fossil Fuels and Global Warming
- Explain where fossil fuels come from and how they provide energy. Roughly explain power generation in a coal-fired power plant or combustion engine
- Explain global warming
- Identify CO2 as a pollutant
- Identify other forms of pollution from energy sources
- Defend global warming as being true
- Identify impacts of global warming
- Calculate and explain a carbon footprint
4-Week Module: Efficiency
- Define efficiency
- Identify sources of energy inefficiencies
- Identify ways to improve efficiency personally; identify how energy is used at home
- Estimate efficiencies from energy sources (general sense of how much energy reaches end-use)
- Explain how small individual changes scale to large total changes
4-Week Module: Electricity and Heat Alternatives
- Identify alternative heat and electricity sources (solar PV,solar thermal, wind)
- Explain how each generates electricity and/or heat
- Compare alternatives to traditional sources based on pollution, cost, availability
- Compare alternatives to each other based on pollution, cost,availability