Go Green, Go Clean

Well, today was the day! After weeks of planning, hours spent practicing and many late nights editing my group finally taught our two lessons. As you read in my previous blog our topic is clean & green energy! I personally was very excited about this topic because I wanted to learn more ways I can help our planet through the use of alternative forms of clean energy.

For our direct instruction lesson we used a google slideshow that you can find HERE to teach the necessary vocabulary and concepts that the students will need to know in order to do the inquiry lesson. As we taught our direct instruction lesson, the students followed along writing the necessary words in their "green energy" booklets that we provided. I think this was useful because after the students learned a new word they wrote it in their booklets and then read the definition again. This repetition is key to learning vocabulary and we thought this would benefit our students when it was time to apply the knowledge they learned. In addition to the booklets we used an acronym to teach the five forms of clean energy. Silly (Solar) Boys (Biomass) Go (Geothermal) Hunting on (Hydro) Weekends (Wind). Together as a class we repeated this over and over until it was second nature for the students. The direct instruction lesson went smoothly with a few check for understanding activities and a couple of guided practice worksheets to ensure the necessary material was learned. The students were very respectful for the direct instruction lesson and seemed to be very interested in learning more about green energy.


Now, let's talk about our inquiry lesson... We chose to create a webquest for our inquiry lesson in which the different groups of students would each become experts in one form of green energy. Similarly to group 1 we chose to use a voki o introduce our problem. This choice was also our biggest problem as teachers. We thought it would be a good idea to use a voki of President Trump in which he would ask our class of students for help as he wants to save our planet. Yeah, we THOUGHT this was going to be a good idea, but instead of having the class actively listening, they all bursted out in laughs and had their own comments to say about Mr. President. I wish we would have used a letter/ email "written" by the president and maybe things would have gone smoother. My colleagues and I did not let this ruin our lesson though. We tried to keep it as serious as possible and explain to the class what we would be doing in our groups. We went over the inquiry process in our google slides presentation which you can access HERE.

After we taught the lesson it was time for the groups of student activists to get working! Each group was assigned a form of green energy and using the webquest I created they would fill in a sheet to become an expert on their energy. The groups then explained why their type of energy would be best for the United States with details from what they learned. The students seemed to enjoy researching their energy topic using the ipads. I think the inquiry lesson was very effective and engaging for the class because they felt as if their voice was going to be heard by the government which made the experience authentic for the class. I'm glad they learned something because the future of clean and energy lies in that generations hands.