2.41
Power Plants: A Plant-Based Energy Curriculum for Grades 5 through 8.
Joy Cohen. Burlington, Vt.: National Gardening Association, 1992.
Program Overview
Power Plants contains activities that may be used as a springboard for creating original plant investigations. The unit was developed to complement the plant-based science curriculum GrowLab: Activities for Growing Minds (see 2.57), but it may be used alone as well.
Teacher's Guide
Recommended grade level:
5-8.
Power Plants, a 6-activity unit, helps students examine how plants and other living things use and transform energy. It teaches them the importance of solar energy and resource conservation.
Among the activities, for example, students conduct an experiment to investigate the relationship between light energy and plant growth and development. They also compare starch production in plants grown in the dark with that of plants grown in light to understand that plants can change light energy to food (chemical) energy through the process of photosynthesis. In another activity, students play a simple business game to simulate how energy becomes less available at each level in a food chain. They also build and use a simple calorimeter to explore how food energy can be measured in the form of heat energy, explore how energy resources are used in producing food, and analyze their own energy conservation practices.
Power Plants may be used to complement GrowLab: Activities for Growing Minds (see 2.57), or it may be used alone. Each activity includes background information for the teacher, procedures, and a materials list.
Key to Content Standards: 5-8 (see app. C)
UNIFYING CONCEPTS AND PROCESSES: Systems, order, and organization; form and function.
SCIENCE AS INQUIRY: Abilities necessary to do scientific inquiry; understandings about scientific inquiry.
PHYSICAL SCIENCE: Transfer of energy.
LIFE SCIENCE: Structure and function in living systems; populations and ecosystems.
Price:
$5. (ISBN 0-915873-33-8).
Publisher/supplier:
National Gardening Association.
Materials:
Available locally, or from commercial suppliers.
Topic Index listings linked to this entry
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Energy conservation, Physical Sciences: Motion, Forces, and Energy, ~ Using Energy, ~ "The Best of Edison" Science Teaching Kits, ~ Machine Shop,
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