Best made plans!!!
Some of the best lessons are those where you have to innovate and come up with last minute ideas that can be your very best. This happened last week. We had a week of rainy whether here in Perth (normally the land of eternal sunshine!) and this meant my Year 6G group would not be able to do the solar cans lesson. So 24 hours beforehand I had to come up with another lesson to explore a renewable energy source. So off I went browsing the internet. More than happy to stumble across this site from the UK windpowerchallenge. This site had everything I needed to make this lesson engaging and exciting for my sixes. We started off watching the youtube clip on Sri Lankan wind power and a wind power disaster. The students found the out of control wind turbine fascinating. The website provides a teacher instruction sheet and poster explaining how to set up the student challenge including details on how to lead a discussion on variables and fair testing. I made my own adjustments. Our challenge was to make a wind turbine that could lift a small plastic cup. The students measured how may counters the cup could carry and the height it was lifted up to. The students recorded their predictions and findings on a worksheet I designed. Our wind source - hairdryers!! Luckily I have several.