Facilitating+The+Driving+Question

Duration: 35-40 minutes


 * Driving Question**: How can we produce energy for our community from available biomass in a sustainable manner?

Write driving question on the board. Ask students what you need to know in order to answer it; underline the words that need to be defined: How can we produce energy for our __community__ from available __biomass__ in a __sustainable__ manner?

We can see here that we need to define 3 words. Ask students to take a minute or two to define these words individually then come back as a whole group and share.

Tomorrow we'll be going to Fair Oaks Dairy. Thinking about our driving question and how we've defined our 3 words ask students to come up with questions for the field trip. This may be a good time to hand out this. Students should record what they know and what they'd like to know about community, biomass, and sustainability. Using either a class chalkboard, whiteboard, bulletin board, or free wall, develop a large KWL Chart (only fill in Know and Want to know). You will use this chart after the field trip to gather what you've Learned.

Students should start thinking about what type of biomass they'd like to investigate for this project. This activity, as well as the field trip, should help them narrow their individual focus and help you to put students into groups based on interest. Groups should be no larger than 4 students each.

