To frack or not
To frack or not
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Resource from the ENGAGE project, which won 'best open educational resource (2017)'
The extraction of gas from shale rock – hydraulic fracturing, or fracking – is widespread in the USA. Whilst some countries in Europe have banned fracking following concerns that substances used in the process pollute water, others want to exploit shale gas reserves to provide new – and cheap – sources of natural gas. In this activity, students decide whether they support a ban on fracking. They apply their knowledge of the properties of rocks to decide whether substances from fracking can get into water, and learn how to justify opinions.
Learning objective
- Explain why a rock has a particular property based on how it was formed
- Give opinions, present evidence to support their opinions, and explain their reasoning
Blueprint curriculum link
Lesson 1
- Unit: Earth systems
- Concept: Rock cycle: The three type of rock that make up the Earth's crust were formed by processes that link together in a never ending cycle
- Learning stage: Apply
Lesson 2
- Skills: Explanations: Argue for a claim with data and reasons
- Learning stage: Analyse
Activity contents
- Teachers guide
- Two powerpoint presentations (lesson 1 and 2)
These lessons are delivered as a zip file. After you checkout, you will be sent an email with the link to download them.
Weblinks
A neutral view of fracking, explained in 5 minutes
Explanation of fracking from a fracking company
Several videos against fracking from a campaigning organisation
This article from Deutsche Welle summarises the current state of play for fracking in European countries, and includes a useful map.
Newspaper article about EU fracking report
This article reports on a recent EU report on fracking.
Newspaper report in answer to the question ‘why is fracking bad?’
A clear and relatively balanced report on fracking
Fracking and drinking water in the USA
A report about contaminated drinking water in the USA
This long and detailed article describes pollutants from substances used in fracking, written from a particular perspective.
Q&A
For the Year 7 Mastery Practice book:
For the Y9/GCSE Mastery Practice Book:
It was written to help year 7 students learn to transfer the scientific knowledge to unfamiliar situation. It can also be used by students in other years to improve their understanding of the fundamental concepts. Learning to apply is what will give students access to the 60% of marks at GCSE that demand more than recalling content. The book uses a research-based approach to teach students how to solve different types of problems.
The Practice Book has a chapter on each unit in the year 7 curriculum, based on a 5-year curriculum and AQA's KS3 Science Syllabus. Download the sample material to see exactly what concepts and types of problems are included.
The first strategy studente need to learn is to evaluate the problem and what knowledge is needed to solve it. 'Detect' simulates how an expert looks at a question. They make sense of the situation, look beyond the superficial details to find the deep structure This allows them to recognise this as an example of a problem type they have seen before, and recall the organised information they need to solve - key concepts. It ensures that students avoid their inclination to just look at the keywords, and dive in risking misunderstanding the situation. Detect is broken down into smaller steps, usually: draw a diagram, show values, identify unknown, decide the concept
This encourages students to bring into their working memory all their existing knowledge, externalise it on paper (to reduce working memory demands), and then home in on what's relevant to solving the problem.
The third stage of the problem solving strategy is the actual solution process using the knowledge from Recall.The Solve starts by showing how to use the knowledge from Recall and models a step by step process of moving towards a solution for the problem.We teach students how to write answers scientifically, using a variety of structures like claim-evidence-reasoning, and problem-solution, and cause-effect.
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