Activity Introduction

Quick summary: Students explore the topic of wind and wind energy. They begin by brainstorming ‘windy’ words, illustrate these words and use them in sentences. They look at using wind to create electricity, first watching a clip of a wind farm and then making their own wind turbine.

Activity developed in partnership with    tasmania_hydro_200x84_300pxl

Hydro Tasmania has been at the forefront of clean energy innovation for one hundred years. It is Australia’s largest producer of clean energy – generating hydro and wind power – and the largest water manager. Hydro Tasmania has 55 major dams, operates 30 hydropower stations and has built some of Australia’s largest wind farms.

Hydro Tasmania also sells energy in the National Electricity Market through its retail business Momentum Energy, and sells its expertise internationally through its consulting business Entura. Visit the Hydro Tasmania website to learn how the business is working towards Australia’s clean energy future.

Learning goals:

  • Students understand that we can use wind to create energy and electricity.
  • Students recognise words and text relating to wind and weather.

General capabilities: Critical and Creative Thinking.

Cross-curriculum priority: Sustainability – OI.8.

Australian Curriculum content description:

Foundation English

  • Use interaction skills including listening while others speak, using appropriate voice levels, articulation and body language, gestures and eye contact (ACELY1784)
  • Create short texts to explore, record and report ideas and events using familiar words and beginning writing knowledge (ACELY1651)

Year 1 English

  • Engage in conversations and discussions, using active listening behaviours, showing interest, and contributing ideas, information and questions (ACELY1656)
  • Create short imaginative and informative texts that show emerging use of appropriate text structure, sentence-level grammar, word choice, spelling, punctuation and appropriate multimodal elements, for example illustrations and diagrams (ACELY1661)

Year 2 English

  • Create short imaginative, informative and persuasive texts using growing knowledge of text structures and language features for familiar and some less familiar audiences, selecting print and multimodal elements appropriate to the audience and purpose (ACELY1671)

Foundation and Years 1 & 2 Design and Technologies

  • Identify how people design and produce familiar products, services and environments and consider sustainability to meet personal and local community needs (ACTDEK001)
  • Explore how technologies use forces to create movement in products (ACTDEK002)
  • Visualise, generate, develop and communicate design ideas through describing, drawing and modelling (ACTDEP006)

Syllabus outcomes: ENe-1A, ENe-2A, EN1-1A, EN1-2A, STe-10ME, ST1-14BE, ST1-15I, ST1-16P, STe-6NE, ST1-7PW, STe-5WT, ST1-5WT.

Topic: Hydro Tasmania, Energy.

Time required: 60 mins

Level of teacher scaffolding: High – oversee activity, facilitate discussion and assist students in creating wind turbines.

Resources required:

Digital technology opportunities: Digital sharing capabilities (extension).

Homework and extension opportunities: Includes opportunities for extension.

Keywords: Wind, wind turbine, wind farm, electricity, energy.

Cool Australia’s curriculum team continually reviews and refines our resources to be in line with changes to the Australian Curriculum.

Worksheets

Teacher Worksheet

Teacher Preparation

Overarching learning goal: By participating in this lesson, students will recognise words and text relating to wind and weather and will understand that we can use wind to create energy and electricity.

Teacher background information: Energy is the lifeblood of our modern life. It gives us light and keeps our food fresh. It powers our industry, fuels our cars, and charges our iPhones. Our energy is produced by burning fossil fuels and this has a range of environmental, social and economic impacts. One of the most significant is the emission of greenhouse gases. A solution is the transition to clean energy sources. The brilliant thing is that we have huge amounts of free, renewable and clean supplies of natural energies. These include sunlight, wind, running water, oceans and underground hot rocks.

According to the Clean Energy Australia Report 2013:

  • 14.76% of Australia's electricity came from renewable sources in 2013; enough to power the equivalent of almost
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Student Worksheet

Thought starter: Cape Denison at Commonwealth Bay, Antarctica, is said to be the windiest place on Earth.

Write one or two sentences using your windy word.

1.

2.

 

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