This was the briefcase that the students collected all of their science experiment recording sheets in.

This is the light energy mini-book that I used with my students during our light energy experiment.

The BEST culminating activity to our unit on energy was going on a field trip to

This energy plant uses household trash to create renewable Electrical Energy!  HOW COOL IS THAT!  We had a tour of the facility and they explain to the students HOW electrical energy is made by burning household trash…how is that for being GREEN!  Wheelabrator Energy plant is a FREE feild trip as well.  They have 17 different Wheelabrator Plants around the country.

This is a really cool video that shows the whole process of how burning household trash can be turned into renewable electrical energy!  Very Interesting and smelly…But COOL!

When we returned from Wheelabrator Energy Plant, we completed a writing activity on how Wheelabrator creates electrical energy using time order words and wrote in a fun little book.

This was our culminating project for our Energy Unit.  Each child made a flip flap book which allowed them to “Show What They Knew” about the different forms of Energy.  They also wrote an opinion paragraph about the form of energy they believed to be the most important and added it to the back of their Energy Flip Flap Book!

What I LOVE about this unit is that it directly correlates to our unit on Earth Day!  As soon as we finish our unit on Energy, we move into our Earth Day lessons and activities during Science because they are intertwined ideas and concepts.  During our Earth Day unit, I read a few different books and I show them this cute little video.  My students will write about how and why to conserve water, electricity and trees.  The will write and learn about how to protect our environment and draw and label pictures about how they can Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle.  They will also write a short acrostic poem related to Earth Day and define important vocabulary.

I also read these books to my kiddos…

I tend to be more of a project-based teacher, so I always try to come up with innovative ways to get my kiddos excited about what they will learn and accomplish at the end of a unit.

For Earth Day, my students will create a lapbook to display all of their activities in.

Here is what our lapbook will look like…

If you would like to take a peek at this unit, you can head on over and check it out in my TPT Shop!

Just click the image above and you can head on over there 🙂

So…my new friends… This in a nutshell is how I integrate teaching Forms of Energy and Earth Day.  My kiddos LOVE all of our activities because they are interactive and FUN 🙂  What more could they want!

As I promised… I wanted to share a few FREEBIES with you from this post 🙂

Click the image below to snag my Trash Can writing templates and my Light Energy mini-book from my Energy Unit!   I hope you can use some of these resources in your classroom!

I am so excited that I was given the opportunity to share my ideas and resources with Rachel’s followers!  It’s been a BLAST!

Just a little about me….

 

I have been a teacher for over 21 years.  Most of those years I have been teaching second grade.  What I find so exciting and challenging is that I have students with such varying ability levels.  I love to differentiate my instruction to address the different ability levels in my classroom, so many of resources can be used for students up to 4th and sometimes 5th grade!  Creating rigorous, FUN, and interactive resources that are aligned with the common core state standards is what I strive to do with each unit I create.

Big Hugs,

Anna