How Does Energy Drive You? And What Can You Do To Control It?

Welcome to Dilworth STEM Academy's first STEM Unit! The final quarter many STEM activities will be taking place as we evolve into our fill fledged academy. One of the most visible activates is the 8th Grade pilot project. Our 8th grade teachers and students will be participating in a 5 week project on energy.

The Science, Language Arts and Math and ESL teachers, have been working very hard as they research Project Based Learning (http://www.bie.org/ ). They have been working through the process of selecting standards, both state and national (http://www.commoncore.org/), to be the skeleton of the students learning. They even took a whole day to sit down together to plan more of the unit so they could create a true interdisciplinary unit. The location of that planning session was at our new Partner in Education, Desert Research Institute (www.dri.edu).

 

The teachers first drafted the essential question: How does energy drive you? And what can you do to control it? They then created a rubric, which a panel of judges will use when scoring the students small group presentations the week of May 25-27. The students will be responsible for presenting on one area of energy. They are to include a school energy audit, home energy audit, research paper, a model of their topic on energy, as well as SMART goals for both energy conservation and goals for themselves as they transition into high school. One important component for real world learning in education is to include the community and outside organizations to help make education more purposeful.  The organization we are working with for this project is Envirolution (www.envirolution.org) They are helping to provide much of the curriculum which teachers and students will use during these 5 weeks.   

We are all very excited about this project. We know it will make learning hands on, fun, and the students will be gaining and applying their learning in depths never touched before. To learn more about the project please talk with the 8th grade teachers and you can get a better feel as to how Dilworth STEM academy will operate next year.