In English students have been exploring the concept of sustainable energy and what we can do to help reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. Students have explored these concepts by reading two articles. The first one is called “Powering the Planet” where students have learned about three possible renewable energy sources: sun, wind, and nuclear. The second article is called “City of the Future?” where students read about the city of Dubai and what it’s doing to reduce its ecological footprint and provide its citizens with green ways of living.
These written and visual texts promote global citizenship and intercultural learning through the core concepts of ethical action and sustainability. Furthermore, in these reading exercises students have practiced the reading skills of identifying pros and cons and identifying an author’s opinion.
One of our three pillars at Rochester School is “Useful and Quality Learning for Life and the World”. Therefore, students used the school as a living text by investigating the sources of renewable energy that are used at Rochester School. After this, students were assigned groups based on their chosen renewable energy source. Each student in the group had a specific role in order to accomplish the task. Students then used inquiry thinking to research their renewable energy source and create their own renewable energy mini-model to reduce the amount of energy consumption at home. Students presented the process of their project and their mini-models to their classmates who provided feedback using CVIS.
The essential questions we explored in this unit were:
Factual: What are some different ways of producing energy?
Conceptual: How is Rochester School helping to reduce its carbon footprint?
Debatable: Can our individual actions to reduce our carbon footprint really make a difference on a global scale? In this project, students were able to satisfy their basic needs of fun and survival as they used their creativity to explore energy solutions in a local and global context.
Jennifer Chant Acevedo English Teacher High School – Grade 9-12