Teachable Moment: The Gulf of Mexico oil spill

I read a tweet the other day that really got me thinking about what we do as teachers and how we make learning relevant to students’ lives. It was short and to the point. “Gulf Oil Spill…a teachable moment.” It can be a teachable moment, so how are we going to make the most of it? There are important things like this happening in our world every day that shape and mold our students. With a little creativity, we can use these events to make learning more relevant and authentic. There is just something special when we can anchor our teaching to things happening around us right now. Students will see footage on TV, articles in newspapers, and discussions on the Internet as the problems surrounding fishermen who are completely out of work during the crisis and the amount of money it will take to fix the leak. Math teachers can create all different kinds of problems with the numbers in the news about things like the rate of they are learning about it in class. It’s real.

There are many issues surrounding the Deepwater Horizon oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico. Social Studies teachers might want to focus on the history of oil transport and spills, or the history and politics of offshore drilling. Science teachers have lots of options for biology and chemistry activities related to oil, wildlife, and oil-related problems in the ocean and on shore. Economics teachers can explore the leak, the size of the slick, and the amount of time it takes to clean each animal.

Joann discussed some excellent resources available on The Gateway on the topic of oil spills. Although most of them are intended for students in 6th-12th grades, I worked with a creative kindergarten teacher who used some of them to create a very fun and meaningful day of learning about oil spills for his class. I was amazed at the interest level in these young kids and how they truly rose to a challenge when they were given the chance. They were having so much fun making their own oil slicks and experimenting with different tools to clean them, I think most of them forgot they were learning! Between Joann’s resources and some other online tools, you should be able to easily take advantage of this teachable moment like he did.

To truly understand the impact of this oil leak, students need to be able to see what is happening in the Gulf of Mexico. There is a huge amount of pictures and videos you can find on the web. There is a very nice set of pictures from the Boston Globe with detailed captions. I am working on using online photos and videos to create an Animoto movie that you can use as an introduction to an oil spill lesson. I will post the link on our Facebook and Twitter pages. There is also a nice video on CNN that shows the speed of the leaking oil with an underwater camera. Kudos to Mr. Kruckewitt for leading me to so many great pictures! Here is the link to the Animoto movie.

Now that the students have seen pictures of the disaster, how to we get them to understand the sheer size of the mess it is creating? Paul Radamacher created a tool with Google Earth that compares the spill to different metropolitan areas. You can even type in your own city, and it will superimpose an outline of the spill over it. I thought it was a really neat tool, since students can relate the size to an area they know.

The kindergarteners were especially excited to learn that hair was being used to aid in the cleanup by absorbing the oil. They experimented by cleaning up their own oil slicks with wool, and it worked really well. They are collecting pet in their classroom to send to a company that uses the hair to sop up excess oil. Some of the kids are even holding a bake sale to raise money for the cleanup, and to collect more pet hair. I love the social action in these little kids. Look at LearningToGive.org for more ideas for including social action lessons in world topics like this.

I know some of you are finishing up your school year already, and some of us have a little time left. We are just finishing some standardized testing, so hands-on activities like this are a very welcome addition to the classroom. I hope some of these resources will be useful to you. As always, please let us know what you think as we continue the discussion on our Facebook and Twitter pages.

~Peggy's Corner - 5/22/2010~

The Price of Oil

Offshore oil drilling has long been a controversial topic, and the debate ratcheted up a notch when a BP offshore drilling rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico last month. At this writing, BP has installed a tube to siphon some of the 210,000 gallons of crude oil that had been spewing into the Gulf each day.

The United States is by far the leading consumer of oil and petroleum products in the world. In 2008, the US consumed about 950 gallons of oil per person. Despite all the discussion over the years of renewable sources of energy, we are still heavily dependent on oil. My picks this week focus on the environmental, social, and economic effects of oil dependency. Many lessons discuss the ecological damage that occurs with each oil spill, as well as the international politics of oil production and consumption. It’s easy, then, for some students to conclude that we should simply reduce our reliance on oil. But what would be the ramifications of drastically reducing our oil consumption? How would we, as a nation and as individuals, fare if there was a sudden shortage of oil? Students need to be able to view both sides of the issue, and wrestle with the complexities presented by the realities of the continued reliance on oil by the US.

The Drill on the Spill: Learning About the Gulf Oil Leak in the Lab
http://www.thegateway.org/browse/dcrecord.2010-05-11.8640498375
Subjects: Ecology, Life Sciences, Economics
Grade: 6-12
In this lesson, students discuss the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and related cleanup efforts. They conduct experiments to learn more about the effects of oil spills, and apply their findings to the coastal communities in the gulf region. Students also explore the economic and political impacts of the oil spill, as well as the technological progress to date toward stopping the leak. This lesson is from The New York Times Learning Network, which offers free lesson plans and other educational materials based on content that appears in the newspaper. Lessons are aligned to national content standards.

Oil Slick Emergency
http://www.thegateway.org/browse/dcrecord.2010-05-11.9056093621
Subjects: Ecology, Life Sciences
Grade: 9-12
In this lesson, students determine how best to address an oil slick through either recovery, removal, or dispersion. Not all oil slicks respond to the same treatment, so students assume various role-play guises as an area committee to learn what types of technologies are available for cleaning up the spill. This lesson is a product of NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration, which is part of the U.S. Department of Commerce. NOAA’s education service offers online case studies, lesson plans, graphics, discovery kits, and other materials that cover ocean-related science topics.

Oil + Water + Wildlife = A Real Mess
http://www.thegateway.org/browse/dcrecord.2010-05-14.0882216341
Subjects: Ecology, Science, Technology
Grade: 6-8
In 2007, World Without Oil ran an online simulation for students called Oil Crisis: Get Into the Game, where students responded to events caused by a global oil shortage. Although the simulation is over, the lessons still have great relevance. In this lesson, students complete an experiment to show the effects of oil on different animals. What’s neat about this resource is that you can see how your individual state’s standards are addressed in this particular lesson by clicking on the Standards tab and using the pull-down menu.

~Joann's Picks - 5/22/2010~