Teaching sequence

Work through this resource material in the following sequence:

10 minutes

Tune In: Where does energy come from?

30 minutes

Find Out: Energy production in Australia

20 minutes

Take Action: Future energy sources

5 minutes

Reflection

Learning intentions & success criteria

Students will:

explore different types of energy creation currently being used in Australia.
consider the sustainability and impact of energy creation.

Students can:

differentiate between renewable and non-renewable energy
describe the current and future resources required to maintain energy supply
explain the impacts of energy creation in terms of sustainability.

Tune In: Where does energy come from?

Step 1

Turn the lights on in your classroom. Ask your students, What is light? (a type of kinetic energy). Once you have a definition ask, Where does this particular light come from? The aim is to establish an energy source, such as a power plant or solar array.

If you have already covered how energy is transformed and transferred in a system, use this to review the process from the classroom back to the energy source. If you have not already covered this, use it to establish prior knowledge about the energy grid and how energy is transferred from the power source to the classroom.

Step 2

Ask your students, what different methods are you aware we can use to generate energy? Divide the board in half and note renewables on one side and non-renewables on the other. Student answers might include:

coal
oil
natural gas
nuclear
wind
solar (solar farms and rooftop arrays)
geothermal
hydro.

Step 3

Once you think you have created an exhaustive list, ask your students to identify why some sources are considered renewable and some resources are considered non-renewable. As a class, make an initial definition for each of these terms and record them.

Find Out: Energy production in Australia

Step 1

Explain to your students that they will be exploring specific energy types in more depth. Their aim is to establish the impacts of this form of energy creation, exploring how the energy is created, what the initial start-up resource requirements are, what the ongoing resources requirements are, and what the byproducts of this process are.

Ask your students,

What do you think we mean here by resources?

Draw a quadrant on the board, with one section for each of the four dimensions of sustainability (environmental, social, economic, political). As students provide their answers, record them in the different quadrants.

Student answers might include:

environmental resources - power plants, machinery, coal, suitable land etc.
social resources - expertise, skilled labour, workforce, training opportunities, ensuring a diverse workforce with equal opportunities etc.
economic resources - initial start-up funds, ongoing income from products, etc.
political resources - political support, community engagement, etc.

Once you have their answers recorded, explain that these are the four dimensions of sustainability. Considering sustainability as a chair, each dimension is a leg. If you take a leg away, the chair will collapse, and the project will no longer be sustainable. For example, it doesn’t matter if you have the most environmentally friendly project, with the best experts in the field and the strongest community support, if you don’t have the funds to get the project happening.

Step 2

Divide the class into pairs or small groups, and assign each group one of the energy types you have discussed (Solar farms, small-scale solar, coal, wind, hydro, gas, and nuclear). Each group will explore the energy factsheets and use the Student Worksheet to record their discoveries. They are looking to discover more about this method of energy creation and how it works, as well as the physical, human, economic and political resources needed to start this energy creation process and the impacts this will have.

You might like students to conduct their own research in this time as well as using the factsheets provided.

Note: Encourage students to think critically about each type of resource needed. For example, for human resources, this includes the importance of ensuring a diverse workforce across all stages of energy generation projects.

	Start-up	Ongoing	End of Life
Physical Resources
Human Resources
Economic Resources
Political Resources

Extension opportunity: provide students with the link to the Future Energy Jobs Guide and task them with discovering at least 5 different careers integral to their energy type. Students should explain how the careers fit into the categories and topics in the above table (encourage students to choose a renewable energy type for this extension if they were allocated a non-renewable type for the research task).

Step 3

Once students have completed their worksheets, have them combine with other groups that looked at either the same energy type or a similar energy type (e.g., Solar Power Plants and Rooftop Solar Arrays). In this new group, students are looking for commonalities, differences, or something the other group noted that they didn’t consider. Students can continue to add to their worksheets during this time.

Take Action: Future energy sources

Step 1

Now that students have developed their understanding of the creation process and the resources needed for it, task them with creating a science communication piece to explain the impact of this process to the general public.

In the interest of time, we have provided an infographic template for your students to use. You might like to print these out for your students or invite them to use Canva or another digital platform to design their pieces of communication. If you prefer students to create their own infographics, you can extend this project to another class.

We have also provided an example of a completed infographic to share with your class.

Step 2

Once students think they have completed their infographic, ask them to complete the following sentences.

My infographic is about…
More specifically, my infographic tells people…
After reading my infographic, I want people to know…

After finishing these sentence stems, ask students to review their infographic. Is there anything they would like to change to make their message clearer? Students could either note these design changes or edit their design to better address their key message.

At Cool.org, we encourage celebrating student work. These infographics could be placed on a wall display in the classroom to facilitate learning through the rest of the energy unit.

Step 3

Review the definitions of renewable and non-renewable energy you created with your students at the start of the class. Does the class still agree with them? Do they need to add anything or remove anything?

Reflection

Reflect on the lesson with your students by asking them to answer the following questions.

Do you think that the energy creation process you reviewed is a sustainable process for Australia’s energy industry?
Which of the impacts you discussed concern you the most?
What of the impacts do you think is a positive?

Australia’s Energy

Go to

Summary

Lesson Guides and Printables

In this lesson

Australia’s Energy

Go to

Summary

Lesson Guides and Printables

In this lesson