SKU: EULGEN

The Leader's Guide includes background information for each activity, suggested teaching strategies, a list of materials needed for each activity, and suggested questions to deepen youths' investigations. No prior science knowledge is necessary to successfully use the AXIS curriculum.

This unit will help the youth begin to understand the difficult and abstract concept of energy. In the first half of the unit, the youth will be exploring the idea that when they see something happen they are seeing energy change from one form to another. The youth begin by examining where they get their own energy and how that food energy changes into the energy they need to run and jump. In the second activity, the youth use clues to identify the many things around them that use energy. Next, they spend time playing with toys to consider how the energy they put into a toy makes that toy fun. They use this new knowledge to write a story about how energy changes forms in their daily lives. Finally, the youth will build a contraption where energy changes forms at least four times.

In the second part of the unit, the youth learn about saving our valuable energy resources. They play a game where they learn about personal choices they can make to save energy. In the next activity, they patrol their afterschool site looking for ways that both energy and money can be saved. The youth use their findings to make recommendations to the site director about how he or she can save money and energy. There are then three activities that focus on alternative, renewable sources of energy. The youth recognize that instead of relying on non-renewable sources of energy, such as oil and coal, we can get energy from renewable sources. The Sun, wind and water can provide us with energy that is renewable. The final activity, asks the youths to participate in a role-play scenario in which they are participants in a local school board meeting. The school board is trying to decide how to solve the problem of rising fuel costs and each youth must give his or her character’s opinion about how to solve this real-life problem.

58 pages

ISBN: 1-58332-096-2