Suggested Activity: Investigate the various attributes that shape our energy decisions and understand why our electricity needs vary based on the demand curve.
Alberta – Grade 6 Science Quick-Start Guide
Summary
The Switch Classroom Alberta Grade 6 Science quick-start guide connects free classroom lessons to the Energy organizing idea in Alberta’s new science curriculum. Every activity supports the Grade 6 learning outcome, students investigate energy resources and explain factors that influence their use, with an emphasis on the skills underneath it: interpreting demand data, comparing sources, and weighing efficiency, cost, and environmental impacts.
Featured lessons include Introduction to Energy Choices and The Demand Curve, where students analyze why electricity needs change through the day, plus hands-on work like building a windmill from repurposed materials and the Energy Matchmaking Gallery Walk, where students argue for one energy source over another. Short videos and labs cover wind, solar, hydropower, nuclear, bioenergy, and coal, and a media literacy mini-unit has students evaluate sources while researching energy topics.
The guide also connects to social studies themes Alberta classrooms already discuss: resource development, economic and environmental trade-offs, and the local and global impacts of energy decisions.
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Organizing Idea Energy: Understandings of the physical world are deepened by investigating matter and energy.
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Guiding Question: How are energy resources used?
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Learning Outcome: Students investigate energy resources and explain factors that influence their use.
Resources
The Demand Curve – Video
Suggested Activity: Investigate the various attributes that shape our energy decisions and understand why our electricity needs vary based on the demand curve.
Introduction to Environmental Impacts
Suggested Activity: Understand the challenges and opportunities to minimize environmental impacts while meeting our energy needs.
Switch, Chapter 2, Foundational Energies: Coal – Video
Suggested Activity: Learn what it takes to generate energy from a variety of sources.
Science of Wind
Suggested Activity: Learn what it takes to generate energy from a variety of sources.
Science of Hydropower
Suggested Activity: Learn what it takes to generate energy from a variety of sources.
Science of Solar
Suggested Activity: Learn what it takes to generate energy from a variety of sources.
Introduction to Bioenergy
Suggested Activity: Learn what it takes to generate energy from a variety of sources.
Introduction to Nuclear
Suggested Activity: Learn what it takes to generate energy from a variety of sources.
Introduction to Energy
Suggested Activity: Discover the hidden energy that powers our daily lives and recognize the importance of energy.
Introduction to Efficiency – Video
Suggested Activity: Explore why efficiency is the first step in managing personal energy use.
Introduction to Wind
Suggested Activity: Challenge your students to build a windmill in this lab activity using repurposed items.
Energy Matchmaking Gallery Walk
Suggested Activity: Challenge students to evaluate reasons to use one energy source over another in the fun and interactive gallery walk.
Developing Media Literacy - Mini-Unit
Suggested Activity: Introduce students to the fundamentals of media literacy through the lens of researching energy topics.