I teach fourth grade at Nathan Hale School in New Haven, Connecticut. Nathan Hale is a prekindergarten to eighth grade neighborhood school. My fourth grade classroom is in a middle class neighborhood. The students in my classroom come from a variety of backgrounds and have a diverse set of needs and skills. Students are held to a high standard and are expected to internalize the material being taught. They are given opportunities to create their own ideas about the world through exploration. Assessment is done via projects which are evaluated through rubrics and students have an unlimited depth to their new understandings.
Teachers have an imperative role to not only teach current information, but also explain how it is relevant to each student. This unit is designed to explain what energy is, the different sources we use to harness energy, and how it relates to students. Students will understand which sources have many negative effects on our environment and which renewable sources will bring our world to a more sustainable future
