1. Students will be able to logically sequence a story, given disconnected sentences and/or paragraphs from that story.
2. Students will be able to read biographical sketches for information and will be able to write a dialog/script which accurately reflects information provided in a short reading.
3. Students will demonstrate proficiency in speaking, characterization and play production by preparing and presenting a dramatic presentation portraying an individual who has made a significant contribution to converting energy from one form to another.
All of the subject matter covered in this module has a connection to energy conversions. Changing energy from one form to another has been an important factor in our development as a society. Students begin the language arts portion of the module being challenged to logically sequence sentences and paragraphs in a Laura Ingalls Wilder short story. The story itself emphasizes the importance of wood as an energy source in the 1800's. Students gain insight into the importance of presenting information in a logical fashion in this exercise.
The majority of this module involves students in reading short biographical sketches about individuals who played significant roles in developing new ways of using energy or converting energy from one form to another. Working in cooperative groups, students will develop short plays illustrating the contributions these individuals made toward energy conversions. As a final challenge, students will attempt to sequence the student presentations from earliest to latest developments.
Begin the unit by pointing out the importance of energy in our lives. Challenge students to think about their lifestyles and to discuss how their lives would be different without certain conveniences, like electricity, heat, or the many forms of transportation. This will put students in a good frame of mind to begin the first activity.
Prepare a class bulletin board. As each student group completes their presentation, ask them to prepare some type of drawing or collage about the invention or idea discovered by the scientist they are studying. Suggest students cut pictures from magazines illustrating aspects of the invention or idea their group studied. After the bulletin board is completed, it can be used as a vehicle for discussing and sequencing the discoveries.
Challenge students to discover more personal details about the lives of each inventor studied. A trip to the library should yield additional information for their productions.
You may wish to devise a final evaluation for the language arts portion of this module. Here is one suggestion for evaluation:
Authentic Assessment: Challenge students to write a one or two paragraph story on a topic centered around some type of energy or energy conversion process. Students should organize their stories so they may be cut into sentences and jumbled. Completed stories can be exchanged with other students to see if they can correctly sequence the events. Before beginning, discuss with students which types of writings are most appropriate for sequencing.
Teacher Notes
Objective:
By completing this activity, students will gain insight into the importance of logically sequencing events within a story.
Materials:
Envelopes containing strips of paper with written sentences from "A Sudden Storm" (see Appendix D)
Suggested Teaching Strategies:
Begin this activity by discussing with students the importance of accurately
relaying information about events that have occurred. To illustrate the point, you may wish to tell students a story in which the order of events are rather jumbled. One possible suggestion would be to relay the events of the previous day or of an athletic event, or other example relevant to students.
Make copies of "A Sudden Storm", one for each student group. Cut each copy of the story into sections by sentences and paragraphs. Place the strips of paper into envelopes, one for each student group. For this activity, it works best if students are placed in groups of 2-3 students only. After distributing an envelope to each group, challenge students to organize the slips of paper so the story appears in logical sequence. Rather than giving students strategies for organizing their thoughts, let student groups work without much common direction. You may wish to tell students that they must arrive at a group consensus about the correct sequence of the story.
Once each group has completed the sequencing task, ask individual groups to share their stories. You may wish to have one group read their story, while the other groups mark those passages they have placed in a different order. Allow discussion time for comparing stories. Encourage students to defend their sequence.
Summing Up Questions:
1. What was the most difficult challenge in completing this sequencing exercise? Student answers will vary, but are likely to include mention of the feeling of
uncertainty about whether the final sequence is really "correct". Assure students that the best rule of thumb is to ask yourself, "Does it make sense?" If the ideas are logically connected and show the progression of one idea to the next, students should consider the assignment successfully completed.
2. While students still have their story arranged on the table, ask them to look at the ideas that were misplaced in their arrangement. In general, what types of ideas were misplaced? Students will likely realize that the items that were misplaced, did not play a very important part in the story.
3. Looking at the student's arrangement of the story, ask students to pull out the slips of paper containing the main ideas of the story. Challenge students to prepare a short summary of the story using these main ideas.
4. To focus students' thoughts on the energy related nature of the reading, ask several of the following questions:
a. What special preparations does your family make for a big winter storm?
b. Compare the amount of time and work involved for the Ingalls family to get wood for heating with how your family gets heat for your home.
c. Share with others, the time in your life when you were the coldest. What were the circumstances? How did you warm up?
5. What strategies did each group use in approaching the problem of sequencing? You may find that some groups read all of the paper strips before beginning the process, while others immediately attempted to sequence the ideas, even before reading all of the material. After different groups have shared their problem-solving strategies, ask students which approach seems the most efficient and why.
6. Challenge students to develop a list of sequencing guidelines or directions they could give to someone attempting to sequence a jumbled story.
Extensions:
Challenge groups of students to write a set of "How to" directions on an energy-related topic. Students should discover that the sequence of events is very important to the directions. Once they are satisfied with their directions, they may cut out paragraphs and sentences. Exchange directions with a different group. Each group must unscramble the other group's directions.
The real challenge in this assignment is writing the directions, more so than sequencing. Possible topics include: How to survey your home for energy use, explaining how a power plant generates electricity, how to save money on gas by driving efficiently, how to make a solar cooker, how to recycle, how to install
an insulating blanket on your hot water heater, how to install a faucet aerator, how to
get electricity from a windmill.
Teacher Notes
Objectives:
1. Students will be able to read biographical sketches for information and will be able to accurately portray that information in the form of a written script.
2. Students will demonstrate proficiency in speaking, characterization and play production by preparing and presenting a dramatic presentation portraying an individual who has made a significant contribution to converting energy from one form to another.
Materials:
Several copies of each biographical reading of scientists and inventors (see Appendix D). Students should be responsible for providing their own costumes and props for their individual plays.
Suggested Teaching Strategies:
Divide the class into cooperative groups. Inform the class that each group will be responsible for reading a one page sketch describing a person who made a
major contribution to developing new types of energy conversions, or who developed new ways of using energy. Each group must determine how to best convey the scientists' contributions to the rest of the class using a play format. To help students focus their efforts, develop a set of guidelines for scripting. Perhaps the guidelines could be developed through discussion and
class consensus. Students should draw on the ideas learned in Module 1 by viewing the video "How to Make Great Videos About Saving Energy". Some of the guidelines might include:
Background:
Energy can be changed from one form into other forms. This is called energy conversion. People have invented ingenious ways of converting one form of
energy into other useful forms. The major categories of energy forms are light, heat, mechanical (motion), chemical, electrical, magnetic, elastic, and sound. Throwing a rock transforms chemical energy in your body into mechanical energy. Starting a fire is a way of converting chemical energy into light and heat. A
steam engine is a more complex machine. It converts heat energy into motion. In an electric generator, motion is converted into electrical energy. In all energy conversions, the useful energy output is always less than the energy input, with some energy being wasted as heat. In each of the biographical
sketches presented, an energy conversion process is involved. As inventions became more and more sophisticated, the number and types of energy conversions increased. When electrical energy became available to homes, the number of
inventions using electricity jumped dramatically in a very short period of time.
Extensions:
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