Emerson McCracken Spear

Strategy Collection
- Trade Book 1:
“Pass the Energy, Please!” - the Basics of the Food Chain and the Transfer of Energy with an
Upbeat Rhyming Story by Barbara McKinney
Strategy: Think, Pair, Share
This will help students to grow in their understanding of the way that physics works in a
complicated way throughout the natural world. It is not always clear how energy is preserved or
the like, and so it is a good topic for discussion. It is a kid’s book, and an easy read, so I would
have us all read it, discuss the following questions and more with a neighbor and then get back to
the whole class with what they think. We may also extend this into a debate.
What Physics principles are shown in this book?
Which Physics principles are obscured or poorly explained in this book?
Does Physics apply to living things or just to plain matter?

- Trade Book 2:
“How Computers Work: The Evolution of Technology" by Ron White
Strategy: SQ3R
My goal with this strategy is to enable students to become more familiar with the digital world
that we live in, through dealing with the physics background and facts that enable it. SQ3R
should help everybody analyze what they are reading much more carefully than many would
otherwise. This is important because of the technical nature of digital technology which is easy
to mis-conceptualize. This tendency can be especially dangerous given the great that these
technologies have on our lives, and the growing risk of data theft.
We would survey individually, share our questions with the whole group, read individually, then
recite what we learned to a partner, and finish by reviewing as a class. This differentiates
learning group sizes.

- Trade Book 3:
"Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air" by David J.C. MacKay
Strategy: 4 Corners Debate
This strategy should help us to contextualize our discussion of energy within today’s societal
pressures and expectations, to help create better informed citizens. It also features the ability for
Emerson McCracken Spear

students to craft their own arguments and responses, helping what they learned to sink in via
application and cognitive conflict.
Procedurally, we would want to read a chapter of this book which relates to a specific technology
or option for addressing energy crises, then students would be asked to divide into 4 groups to
construct an argument for or against a prompt relative to the application of a sustainable
technology. The 4 groups are: Strongly Agree, Agree, Disagree, and Strongly Disagree. The
students would be expected to prepare arguments outside of class for their position and the next
time that we met we would have every group share their arguments and then open up the floor
for discussion.

- Trade Book 4:
“Waves: Physical Science for Kids” by Andi Diehn
Strategy: Graffiti Wall
The graffiti wall is a strategy that helps our students to activate their prior knowledge in such a
way that it can act as a highly interactive anticipation guide. This is an advantage to everyone by
increasing accountability and fun for our students. It provides a lot of student choice regarding
what they want to put on the wall, but more accountability compared to an anticipation guide by
requiring the students’ thoughts to be displayed in front of everyone.
This would be accomplished by asking every student to put up two concepts, questions or images
that come to mind on one side of the whiteboard, then reading our book. Next, we would have
students put two of the same up on the other side of the board, and only one of those may be the
same concept/diagram/image. This requires that students interact with the novelty of what they
have read. Then we would want to discuss the similarities and differences of what we put on the
board to emphasize the things that we learned and the things that we may not have previously
understood.

- Trade Book 5:
“Art and Science of Hammer Throwing” by Yuri Sedykh and Vladimir Strelnitski
Strategy: Vocabulary Sorting Exercise
The strategy presented by Andrew Ubinger is what I mean to employ here. It is to ask students to
skim the text (passage or chapter) for words which they don’t recognize, which then we would
share with the whole class and sort into parts of speech. Next, we would break down each word
and explain what it means before reading the text.
This strategy is effective by applying the principle of prereading to our text. Also, it allows us to
clear up misconceptions and gate-keeping vocabulary issues before getting into the content,
Emerson McCracken Spear

allowing for smoother apprehension of the text without some of the normal barriers that exist for
students.
Emerson McCracken Spear

Think | Pair | Share

_____________________________________________________________________________
“Pass the Energy, Please!”
()_()_()_()_()_()_()_()_()_()_()_()_()_()_()_()_()_()_()_()_()

What Physics principles are shown in this book?

My thoughts | My partner’s thoughts
|

Entropy | Bernoulli Effect

|
Which Physics principles are obscured or poorly explained in this book?
My thoughts | My partner’s thoughts
|
| Conservation of
Conservation of Energy
|
Momentum
Does Physics apply to living things or just to plain matter?
My thoughts | My partner’s thoughts

Yes, each of these principles | Not sure that the laws of

can be seen in the book’s | relativity and perceptions
situations. | predictions would hold for
How can you support this from our book today? real people.
My thoughts | My partner’s thoughts
|
Even the conservation of The confusing laws are not
|
energy happens by the heat really demonstrated in this
|
dissipates and other ways of book.
consuming energy.
Emerson McCracken Spear

SQ3R
_____________________________________________________________________________
“How Computers Work: The Evolution of Technology" by Ron White
’’,,’’-----,,’’,,-----’’,,’’-----,,’’,,-----’’,,’’-----,,’’,,-----’’,,’’-----,,’’,,-----’’,,’’
Survey: This is a place to jot down any notes from your scan.

Electrical signals are really waves.

How can you encode information in waves?
Velocity = frequency x wavelength
Question: What are the questions we want to answer as a class?

How do computers encode binary in a wave?

Do computers know how to understand anything other than binary?
How do Python, or C etc. really communicate to binary?
Read: This is a place to jot down anything you learned from your reading.

Python is a language that is based on the more fundamental language

C, it translates into C, which can use binary.
Our data is unretrievable pretty much. If it’s on the internet it’s out
there for good.
Recite: What did you learn from other’s responses to the questions.

There are different types of quantities in programming. Functions,

arrays, variables, floats, and integers are all different types of
information you can encode. Numbers with decimal places are treated
as a different object than other numbers.
Review: What do you think you’ll need to review in the coming weeks?

The way that waves share information is still unclear to me I’ll need to
keep reviewing that.
Emerson McCracken Spear

4 Corners Debate
_____________________________________________________________________________
"Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air" by David J.C. MacKay
&&^^&&^^&&^^&&^^##############^^&&^^&&^^&&^^&&
Prompt: We as individuals should try to support today’s sustainable technology and reduce
usage of non-renewable sources of energy whenever possible?

Jot down facts/figures/truths from the reading to support both sides of the prompt.
Agree | Disagree
|

Our planet is quickly running | We have enough non-

out of non-renewable sources | renewable resources that we
of energy. | don’t need to panic.
|
|
These sources have become There will be better more
|
causes of geo-political practical technology
|
conflict, which could be developed soon, so we
|
eliminated! Wind is shouldn’t base our
|
everywhere. infrastructure on tech that
|
will soon be obsolete, rather
|
we should invest in
|
Solar costs for installation technology.
|
and maintenance are dropping
|
all the time.
|
|
|
|
|
Emerson McCracken Spear

Graffiti Wall Exit Ticket

_____________________________________________________________________________
“Waves: Physical Science for Kids” by Andi Diehn
---------------)(+)(+)(+)(+)(+)(__________)(+)(+)(+)(+)(+)(---------------

What is one thing that you learned from our new Graffiti Wall?

Waves may move in a DIFFERENT direction than the

material that make up the wave is moving!!!
Emerson McCracken Spear

Vocabulary Sorting Exercise

_____________________________________________________________________________
“Art and Science of Hammer Throwing” by Yuri Sedykh and Vladimir Strelnitski
#@!____#@!#@!____#@!#@!***********!@#!@#!____@#!@#____!@#

Write down words which you don’t recognize or fully understand after your scan of the passage.

We’re going to discuss them and make sure we all are familiar with the words before we read!
Nouns Verbs Adjectives

Sector Coriolis

Torque

Azimuth Centrifugal

Other Parts of Speech

Emerson McCracken Spear

References

Diehn, A. (2018). Waves: Physical science for kids. Pgw.

This book is written at an approachable reading level so that our students will be able to
alternately comprehend and expand upon the content of the work because of the things that we
learn in class.

MacKay, D. J. C. (2016). Sustainable energy--without the hot air. UIT Cambridge.

This book allows us to interact with the cultural perceptions and challenges relative to
energy. It also details for us the way that the energy sector is changing, which enables us to
analyze the physics behind the energy systems we're creating today.

Sedykh, Y., & Strelnitski, V. (2018). Art and science of hammer throwing. BookBaby.

This book by champion hammer throwers gives good examples for talking about the
translational motion of the hammer projectile while it’s in flight. It also contains information
relating to harmonic motion via the spinning that hammer throwers do to build up momentum.
This is a fascinating niche sport, so there should be some fun vocab/concepts.

Shaw, B., & Wallace, C. (2000). Pass the energy please. Dawn Publications.

This text demonstrates the conservation of energy and the interconnectedness of systems
which are important physics concepts. It does so in creative rhyme and nice illustrations. It also
gives us a chance to talk about the energy pyramid and entropy.

White, R., & White, R. (2015). How computers work. Que.

This book is a very detailed look at the actual concept and content of computer's
functioning, which is something that not many people understand. However, this book is
renowned for its excellence in explanation to non-experts, and especially for it's helpful
diagrams. Computers use many physics principles to communicate, especially concepts of waves
and optics, which we could discuss.