Gravity Light – Literacy Task (Teacher Resource)

By: Leila Knetsch

Rationale

Sometimes teachers feel that incorporating literacy involves skills that they do not have and/or involves a lot of marking. It is better for teachers to incorporate short literacy pieces. Sometimes students can read and discuss and sometimes read and write. It does not always have to have a summative task associated with it. Also, the teacher can direct students to mark each other’s work so that they can understand what is expected better, which help students to produce better work.

By incorporating some co-operative learning and literacy in science, teachers can add some variation to other types of work. In this lesson, students will be watching a video, pausing to write and then share. Afterwards, students can read in pairs with a “Read and Review” or “Read and Annotate” by themselves. This can be concluded with students writing down their main and supporting ideas and a six line summary. The six line summary is one of the tasks on the OSSLT (Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test) that the students write in grade 10. Most schools do staff training around the main literacy tasks that students have difficulty with. If teachers need more resources, “Don’t Panic!” books are available at every school and one can consult the EQAO website (www.eqao.ca). Naturally integrated cross-curricular literacy tasks are the key to success for all learners. One area that students need improvement in is in making inferences. Included in this resource are a few multiple choice questions (emphasizing making inferences) and a six line summary.

In terms of resources, The Guardian newspaper from the UK is a great source of articles that are well written, quite informative and fairly brief. Other great sources are Canada’s Globe and mail and Newslea (https:/newslea.com). An article that is one page, double sided is best. If you take out the pictures and make the paragraphs longer, articles that are one page double sided (single spaced) with the largest font size possible is best. For students who do not enjoy reading, one page is not too long and if you reduce the font size, it seems “difficult” for students. Font sizes of 12 or even 14 makes the text seem “reader friendly”. This lowers the bar to students approaching the text and helps with behavior problems. The difficulty level is such that applied level students will find it accessible and academic students will not find it too low. Thus, if a teacher develops a literacy task, it could be used with both levels of classes. A key aspect is having high interest topics for students to read, hopefully ones that they have not heard of before. There are science issues here but also global issues that are important for an informed citizenry.

This is excellent for an applied level class or any class since longer articles would have to be assigned for homework since students read at different speeds. For ELL (English

Language Learners), it is sometimes useful to have a short glossary of specialized words prior to the article.

Curriculum Connection – Alternative Forms of Energy

E1. assess the major social, economic, and environmental costs and benefits of using electrical energy, distinguishing between renewable and non-renewable sources, and propose a plan of action to reduce energy costs

Literacy Sequence at a Glance

Prior reading Give the Gravity Light article to the students the night before to read for homework. It is possible that some students may not do the reading but it gives some students that need the extra time (slow readers, English Language Learners).*

Part A: Minds-on (10-15 min)

Stop, Write and Share while watching a related video about the Gravity Light.

Part B: Working on it (varies, could be 10-40 minutes depending on whether they are making cubes or not and how motivated the students are)

Students create cubes with 5W + how and 6 modifiers (might, is, etc) and roll the dice to create questions about the Gravity Light article. Refer to Appendix 1 and 2. If this seems to complicated/time consuming, just enlarge the Q chart from Appendix 3 and use sticky notes to place questions right in the squares. Students can trade questions with another group and answer them.

Part C: Consolidation (15-20 minutes, finish for homework or the next day in class)

Literacy Task: 5 multiple choice questions and a 6 line summary for students to complete.

The Next Period Students exchange papers to peer review answers to literacy task. Teachers take up questions and give guidance.

Prior Reading: Give the students a photocopy of the article the night before. It is called, “GravityLight: the low-cost lamp powered by sand and gravity” by Oliver Wainright for The Guardian on Dec 14, 2012 found at:

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/architecture-design-blog/2012/dec/14/gravity-light-sand-powered-lamp

*If there are students that were away or did not do the reading, have them do a Read and Review for 1 page of the article before Part B. It is a good refresher for those who have read the article and new for those who did not. It is beneficial for the ELL (English Language Learners) and students with other literacy problem to have a chance to work through it at their own pace.

Part A: Minds On: Watch, Stop and Write – Video

Students sometimes become distracted or inattentive when watching videos. Showing a short video and stopping several times for students to think to themselves, write and share helps them to consolidate the information and stay focused.

Show the following 5 minute video: “The weight of light: how gravity is illuminating sub-saharan Africa”.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/video/2016/jun/21/the-weight-of-light-how-gravity-is-illuminating-sub-saharan-africa-video

1. Stop after 2 minutes and ask students to write down 1-2 important points that they learned in that first two minutes.

2. Ask 2-3 randomly selected students to share. One method of randomly selecting students could be with a pair of dice. Die #1 – table number and Die #2 – person number. This only works if students are seated in clusters of 4,5 or 6.

3. If students are seated in pairs, at the start of the class ask students to letter themselves A or B. If in a group of 3, add person C. The teacher could select a playing card. Black card – Student A, read card = student B. If the teacher draws a black #9, then the person to answer is pair #9, person A.

4. Show another two minutes of the video and ask for a couple of verbal responses.5. Show the final minute video and ask for more verbal responses.

Part B: Working On It – Working Through the Article

Materials needed for each pair: 2 cube templates (Appendix #2) 2 pairs of scissors, markers & tape or glue copy of article, “GravityLight: the low-cost lamp powered by sand and gravity”

by Oliver Wainright for The Guardian on Dec 14, 2012 found at:

o https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/architecture-design-blog/ 2012/dec/14/gravity-light-sand-powered-lamp

1. Give each pair of students a pair of cube templates. Die #1: who, what, why, when, where, how (1 word per face)Die #2: write a modifying word (consult Appendix #1 for the 6 words)

2. Have the students (working in groups), roll the pair of dice to generate a random question starter. Students can write the questions and answers onto their student worksheet.

Example#1: After rolling the dice, they might have, “HOW” and “MIGHT”. Thus, their sentence starter is, “how might……” which they might use to get the following question:

How might people benefit from the Gravity Light?

Example #2: If they were to roll “WHY” and “SHOULD”, the sentence starter would be, “Why should……”.

Why should Canadians contribute to a crowd fund campaign for the Gravity Light?

Easy Alternative: Enlarge Appendix 3 so that the empty squares are large enough for a sticky note (could be the small size). Students can brainstorm and write the questions and answers on their student worksheet, either checking off the word combinations that they have used (how + why, for example) or using the sticky notes to show which ones that they have used already.

Part C: Consolidation (Literacy Task)

Students answer OSSLT style multiple choice and short answer questions and follow that with a six line summary. Students can do peer reviewing of these the following day. Teachers can take up the questions and answers and give the students ideas about what to look for in the good summary (main idea + 3 supporting points and evidence).

Answers included in red

Multiple Choice Questions 1. Why have previous battery free sources of light failed to become popular?

a. The resulting light was too dimb. It took too much effort to maintain the lightc. There was too much up front costd. No one knew how to use them

2. How many people in India had severe burns from the use of kerosene lamps in 2011?

a. 50, 000b. 100, 000c. 250, 000d. 500, 000e. 2.5 million

3. Why are so many women and children getting lung cancer?a. The kerosene lamps at home give off a lot of smokeb. They start smoking at a young agec. They live with smokers and inhale a lot of second hand smoked. There is a lot of air pollution from factories where they livee. They inhale a lot of smoke from wood burning fires used for warmth

4. What is the challenge (mentioned in the article) for the “off-grid scenario”?a. When people live in the wilderness that do not have the ability to

communicate or have refrigerationb. The internet pages have a lot of pictures and video and are meant for

people who are often “on-grid” (have wireless access) so it is hard to conduct business

c. You cannot use FaceTime with your friendsd. It is hard to use Facebook when you do not have access to the network

5. Is the $5 retail cost a reasonable price?a. It depends upon how much money you have to live onb. It should be freec. Not sured. Yes – I could buy that with my allowancee. Yes – people value items more when they pay something for them

**Multiple answers for #5 are possible and this can be a valuable discussion point.

Short Answer Questions1. How does the Gravity Light system work?

As the bag of sand/rocks descends, the gears move and transfer the gravitational potential energy (energy of motion) to electrical energy and then to light energy.

2. What is the problem with the current kerosene lamps used for light?Kerosene results in health problems such as cataracts, lung cancer and eye infections and severe burns.

3. What percent of the household income is used in India for kerosene?

About 20% of the household income is spent on kerosene.

4. Why could Gravity Light succeed where other have failed to make and sell a battery free light?The Gravity Light only uses 3 seconds of effort for 30 minutes return. Other devices (such as using hand-cranked flashlights used in Canada for camping) requires frequent effort.

5. What is the benefit of being able to charge other devices?Rather than just being able to provide light, by charging other devices, the assembly can be attached to devices such as radios and cells phones. This allows for conducting business by text message, and increasing communication person to person and around the country.

For more information, go to the main website for Gravity Light:

https://gravitylight.org/

References

1. Nandanee Sawh – idea about Q charts and question cubes

2. https://gravitylight.org/

Appendix #1: Q chart

Create who/what/when/why/why/how question cubes to encourage higher order thinking (HOTS). One can see that the what and when questions (in the pink section) are factual while the why and how questions (green and yellow sections) drive the questions to a higher level depending on the modifying word along the top of the chart. For example, a question that starts with, “when did…..” is a factual question. The question, “how would…..” would yield an application/synthesis question.

Taken from: http://tinyurl.com/ybqaoogg

Appendix 2: Template for Q chart cubes

image taken from: http://tinyurl.com/yaxq8xpq

Appendix 3: Q chart (best to enlarge to 8 x 14 inches or larger to accommodate small sticky notes (2 x 2 inches) with handwritten questions in the squares).

Image taken from: http://tinyurl.com/ya3hmkrs