This resource details the positives and negatives of hydropower and includes a teacher's guide, reading comprehension handout, and sources for additional research and learning.
The reading includes graphs, data, and infographics to help students understand how hydropower works and how it impacts the environment.
Teaching Tips
Positives
This resource has everything needed to utilize it as a handout, homework assignment, or classroom assignment.
The graphics included in the worksheet are informative and engaging, and the comprehension questions do a good job assessing student understanding of the text.
Additional Prerequisites
Consider distributing the worksheet digitally in order to reduce paper use.
Differentiation
This resource would work equally well in a science class that is learning about renewable energy sources or a language arts class that is working on nonfiction reading comprehension strategies.
This resource lends itself well to a jigsaw activity, where students focus their attention on one or two assigned questions and share their thinking with a partner or group.
As an optional extension activity, have students research the nearest source of hydropower.
Scientist Notes
The energy sector greatly benefits from hydropower. It has restrictions even though it is a renewable source of energy. This teaching resource emphasizes the benefits and drawbacks of hydropower. Classrooms should use this resource.
Standards
Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)
ESS2: Earth's Systems
HS-ESS2-5 Plan and conduct an investigation of the properties of water and its effects on Earth materials and surface processes.
ESS3: Earth and Human Activity
HS-ESS3-4 Evaluate or refine a technological solution that reduces impacts of human activities on natural systems.
Common Core English Language Arts Standards (CCSS.ELA)
Reading: Informational Text (K-12)
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.9-10.10 By the end of grade 9, read and comprehend literary nonfiction in the grades 9-10 text complexity band proficiently, with scaffolding as needed at the high end of the range. By the end of grade 10, read and comprehend literary nonfiction at the high end of the grades 9-10 text complexity band independently and proficiently.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.11-12.10 By the end of grade 11, read and comprehend literary nonfiction in the grades 11-CCR text complexity band proficiently, with scaffolding as needed at the high end of the range. By the end of grade 12, read and comprehend literary nonfiction at the high end of the grades 11-CCR text complexity band independently and proficiently.
