Does It Harm the Air or the Water? Read and Sort

Look at your own electric bill before the table page, and ask where your electricity might come from. After each passage, ask what the resource changes in nature and what people do to help. Check each page with the answer key.

Sort car exhaust and wood soot that harm the air from oil spills and mine runoff that harm the water. A tailpipe is the pipe at the back of a car where waste comes out. The directions on the page read: Read the passage. Then, turn the page, sort the cards and answer the questions. On page 2: Write each card from the Card Bank on a line in the column where it belongs, lines 1 to 8. Then, write the answers to questions 9 and 10 on the lines. The answer key covers the questions on page 2.

Yes, both. We made it for 4th Grade energy, and the page works the same whether it lands on a kitchen table or a center rotation. At home, most families go through it together and talk the answers out loud, and that talking is where most of the learning happens with energy resources. In class it runs well as independent work while you pull a small group. Print one copy or thirty, whichever the day needs.

A fossil fuel is a fuel that formed long ago from living things. Coal began as plants in swampy forests millions of years ago, and oil formed from tiny living things in ancient seas. Fossil fuels are nonrenewable, so they can run out.

Wind, sunlight, moving water, heat from inside the Earth and fuel made from plants such as corn are renewable, because they will not run out. One sheet compares coal power with wind power, and another shows how Iceland uses geothermal energy.

Burning coal and gasoline sends smoke and gases into the air, and sunlight can turn car exhaust into smog. Oil spills, mine runoff and fertilizer from corn fields harm rivers and oceans. One sheet has children sort eight examples into harms the air and harms the water.

Yes. All 12 energy resources sheets have an answer key. The table and graph sheets use labeled records, like one school's solar panels and one family's electric bills, so every answer comes from the page.