G. Casey Cassidy
This year my primary objective is to help my students develop a higher level of energy awareness and to better understand the major impact that their own behavior will have on local conservation efforts. Additionally, we will learn how to become good consumers of electricity, water and gas as we complete individual assessments of our own homes. As the unit develops, we will learn more about how electricity is made, measured and used and we will transfer that knowledge to reading and understanding our utility bills.
At Clemente School, we will complete an overview of existing energy use systems and building design. We will consider new and creative ways to use the facilities which will result in large energy savings with low or no cost improvements. We will assist in creating public energy awareness because everyone needs to be involved in order to control the school’s daily energy consumption. Subsequently, our students will learn new problem solving techniques as they become involved in experimental teaching projects. These projects will incorporate oral and written presentations. All of these experiences will present our students with the opportunity to explore and the best explorations are accomplished with first handed experiments.
Keying on the various exploration possibilities, our strategies will allow our students to immerse themselves in the scientific method process, gathering information, stating hypotheses, designing experiments, making observations and recording data, organizing and analyzing this data, and suggesting future experiments and new hypotheses. Our studies will become interdisciplinary as we study new vocabulary and present oral and written reports in English, make observations based on comparisons and employ critical thinking in Science, study the economic impact of energy cost savings and the global impact of the conservation of natural resources in Social Studies, and finally, compute measurement statistics especially important in mathematical problem solving. I feel that our strategies will be most effective in motivating our students, improving their academic skills and their consciousness of the critical importance of proper energy management for our school and our future. Teamwork and problem solving will become our primary focus as we work together towards reducing the energy waste in our physical plant.