Disciplinary Text-Sets

INTRODUCTION: 

I have selected and curated a set of 8 different “texts” relating to my topic of electricity. The following text were chosen to be appropriate for a class of high school physics students, grades 10-11 (though I think with proper implementation and scaffolding, these texts would be appropriate for all high school grades). The texts were chosen for many different purposes and applications, and depending on the text, will be used to either build background knowledge, supplement the topic taught in the classroom, reinforce crucial information, or introduce new concepts or applications in the content area. Some will be used together to build up to other texts, and some will be used as supplementary illustration tools to help with content comprehension.

TEXT DESCRIPTIONS:

I ended up selecting 9 texts, and I divided them up into three categories: PRINT (book-based, magazine, online articles, etc.), MULTIMEDIA (videos, photo essays, interactive visualizations, etc.) and CULTURALLY RELEVANT (music video, pop-culture readings, news clippings that would be of high interest, etc.) I ended up with five print texts and four multimedia texts. Two of the print texts and one of the multimedia texts were then moved into the culturally relevant text section.

PRINT TEXTS: 

• Beaty, W. J. (1995, August). Misconceptions Spread by K-6 Textbooks: ELECTRICITY. Retrieved July 23, 2017
• This is a huge compilation of easy to read, short essays about the most common misconceptions about electricity. The author uses a lot of illustrative analogies and is very effective in communication the misconceptions, how they are incorrect, and how to understand and imagine the correct concept. This could be used as supplementary texts to help clear up common misconceptions.

• Allain, R. (2016, January 05). How to Build a Super Simple Electric Motor out of Stuff You Already Have. Retrieved July 23, 2017
• An easy to follow, illustrated tutorial showing the reader how to build a simple electric motor using a battery, copper wire, tape, paper clips, and a magnet. Will be used to introduce the concept of electromagnetism.

• SparkFun, J. (n.d.). What is Electricity. Retrieved July 23, 2017
• An easy-to-read, comprehensive text detailing how electricity works. This post explains all the things you need to know about electricity and more, starting with the construction to atoms, to conductivity, to electromagnetism. Would be used to help scaffold towards the more complex concepts.

How to build a super simple electric motor out of stuffyou already have - WIRED magazine

The text “How to Build a Super Simple Electric Motor out of Stuff You Already Have” is an illustrated tutorial produced by WIRED magazine showing the reader how to build a simple electric motor using a battery, copper wire, tape, paper clips, and a magnet. The tutorial describes in brief, easy-to-follow steps how to assemble the different materials together, in order to harness the properties of electromagnetism in a circuit to create a simple motor. The article also briefly mentions some of the science behind why it works, but it doesn’t go into much detail.

storytoolz.com gave the article an average grade level of 6.5, and I would agree. The article doesn’t go into much detail behind the science of why it works, focusing mainly on the assembly process of bending wires and taping paperclips to batteries.  Because of this, the required knowledge to understand the article is very low. The sentences are very short, the language is fairly simple, and the directions are easy to understand and follow. Furthermore, the tutorial is fully illustrated, showing the different steps not only with pictures, but animated gifs and a short video as well. 

If the reader needed to only understand how to follow instructions to put the motor together, then the comprehension level is very low. However, if the reader wanted to understand why the motor was assembled the way it was and apply their background knowledge of electrical circuits to the reading, then the comprehension level would be much higher. 

Because this text will be used with high school students, the task required with the reading will be fairly complex to balance the simple text.  One way I could incorporate this text into the classroom would be as an introduction to electromagnetism. After the students have finished learning about circuits and the basics of electricity, I would introduce the unit of electromagnetism by having them read the article and build their own motors in groups as a lab activity. I would then have them try to explain to my why it worked. Why did the wire spin? Why did the wire spin only with a magnet present? I would do some sort of inquiry activity, and have the students play with their motors to figure out all the ways it does and doesn’t work. From the reading they may have gotten the hint that electricity has something to do with magnetism, as it states “The main idea is that an electric current makes a magnetic field”, but the main goal of the activity is to activate their background knowledge on the subject, and try to fit it in with their new observations, and form questions. From this activity, I would go on to introduce magnetic and electric fields.

Some words in the article that might need explaining are: enamel, RadioShack, and D-cell battery.  

The content words in the article are Electric Current, Magnetic Field, insulator, conductor, and electric motor. Most of these words the students will have already have learned in previous units, the only new content word will be Magnetic Field.

MULTIMEDIA TEXTS:

• TED-Ed (Producer). (2016, January 5). How Do Solar Panels Work? - Richard Komp [Video file]. Retrieved July 23, 2017
• This is a YouTube video produced by TedEd. It is a fully illustrated video that explains  the science of how solar panels work, and how the technology is applied around the world. Helpful video to show students alternative applications of the concepts learned in the electricity unit (how charges can be used in other ways) as well as real-world applications and new innovations in science.

• CrashCourse (Producer). (2016, September 29). Electric Charge: Crash Course Physics #25 [Video file]. Retrieved July 23, 2017 
• This is an excellent video that introduces the concepts of electrical charge and coulumb's law. With the helpful illustrations, animations, and examples, this would be an excellent video to use to introduce the topic of electric charge and electricity.

• Mahuta, K. M. (2017, July 20). What is Electric Current [Digital image]. Retrieved July 23, 2017 
• This is an infographic introducing the basic concepts of electric current. This would be used to help introduce the topic of electricity to the students.

How Do Solar Panels Work? - Richard Komp is a youtube video produced by TED-Ed. It is a beautifully illustrated video that explains how solar panels work. It explains (with helpful animations) how solar panels are made up of two types of silicon, and that the arrangement of the silicon results in an electron sea with lots of free-flowing electrons. When sunlight hits the silicon panels, it forces the free electrons to move around the panels, creating an electrical current. The video then briefly talks about the applications of solar panel technology, the practicality of solar panels based on geography, the limitations of the technology, and the future of the technology and its place in the energy industry.

This text of the video is fairly complex. I transcribed two 150-words chunks (about two minutes total) of the video into storytoolz.com, and the readability results gave the video an average grade level of 10.3. I don’t disagree, the beginning half of the video explains how a solar panel works, and goes into detail about crystalline structure of the electrons, n-type silicon, p-type silicon, and p/n junctions. The qualitative comprehension of the first half is also very complex, even if the students have a solid understanding of crystalline structures and electron configurations, the described movement of the electrons is very abstract, and can be very difficult to understand or visualize. This video is qualitatively and quantitatively very complex, however the complex text and complex narrative is paired with very helpful animations and visualizations that are incredibly helpful in content comprehension. The second half of the video came back with an equally high text complexity score, with storytoolz.com giving it an average grade level of 10.1. This was surprising to me as the second half of the video talked more about global applications of the technology itself, not the science. Regardless, even though I don’t think the text in the second half is 10th grade-level complex, the qualitative content being discussed is complex. The video introduces the complex issues involved in geographical practicality of the technology, land conservation dilemmas, and the possible social/moral/ethical issues surrounding developing countries with no access to a reliable electric grid. Overall, I think this video would be appropriate for 11th and 12th graders, and 10th graders with proper scaffolding. 

Words that may need instructional support before the video would be: terawatt, semiconductor, crystalline (structure).

This video would be shown at the end of the electricity unit, after the students have finished learning the main content. This video would be used to show different applications of the principles in electricity, and would be used to motivate interest in new up-and-coming innovations in the field of electronics and electrical engineering. I would also use this video to help branch the concepts the students learned into the more global schema which they are applied. This would help me tie-in the science with the big picture, and how, as scientists, we have a global impact, and it is important to be aware of the current advances being made in technology and what they can mean. Because the video is fairly complex, the after-video task would be a classroom discussion. If possible, I would like to try to pair this video with a written news article or text that talks about a new development in electrical engineering, or an article that talks about the global effects from various different renewable energy sources.

CULTURALLY RELEVANT TEXTS: 

• WTF, D. (2015, January 08). Asking Science: How Dangerous is Pikachu. Retrieved July 23, 2017
• This science blog uses math and Ohm's Law to calculate how deadly an electric attack from the cartoon character Pikachu would be. This would be used to help motivate and interest students in Ohm's Law calculations.

• The Oatmeal. (n.d.). Why Nikola Tesla Was The Greatest Geek Who Ever Lived [Comic]. Retrieved July 23, 2017
• This is an informative comic that uses dark humor and silly illustrations to teach the reader about Nikola Tesla and his contributions to science. This comic would be used to introduce the students to famous scientists and engineers of the past, as well as help cultivate a curiosity and interest in engineering, as we still don't know how half of Tesla's inventions worked.

• Fujitaki, K., Matsuda, & Trend-Pro Co., LTD. (2009). The Manga Guide to Electricity. Retrieved July 23, 2017.
• This book explains concepts in electricity, but in comic book form. This format breaks up the explanations of complicated concepts into short sentences (word bubbles) and fills every page with descriptive illustrations and diagrams. This will be a helpful text to use to supplement material taught in class.

Pikachu's basic move, Thunderbolt, generates 10 times the amount
of Amps needed to kill the average human

The article “How Dangerous is Pikachu” is a post on a science blog that uses math to calculate how deadly the Pokémon Pikachu would be if it was a real animal. Pikachu is the iconic, yellow mascot of the hit Japanese franchise Pokémon which has been ubiquitous in eastern and western culture since it came out in the mid 1990’s. Even though Pokémon is over 20 years old, the franchise is still hugely popular with young people, and has become a pop-culture icon. The franchise releases new games and TV shows every year, keeping it relevant and updated for the new generations. The blog post uses the descriptions and statistics from the Pokémon TV Show, video games, and card games to give numerical values to each of Pikachu’s electricity-based attacks. The blog then applies Ohm’s law to calculate the current and voltage of each attack, and discusses what that would mean if those electric attacks were to happen to a human. (spoiler alert: the human dies)

The blog post is fairly easy to read—the sentences are mostly short, the post is broken up into paragraphs with large spaces, and the words are fairly simple.  storytoolz.com gave the article an average grade level of 7.4 for readability, and I would mostly agree.  The only thing I would argue is that the equations that are inserted into the middle of the article might be difficult for younger readers, and the content is fairly advanced (current, voltage, and resistance). The students will need to have prior knowledge of these terms and understand the basics of electricity and electric current if they are going to be able to comprehend the article.  They will also have to be able to understand algebraic methods for solving for x with multiplication and division.  Because of this, I would bump the comprehension level to at least 9th grade. 

This reading will be used after the students have learned about Ohm’s Law and how to apply it to calculate current, voltage, and resistance of a circuit. This text will supplement practice problems for applying Ohm’s Law. This reading is fairly simple, but introduces the fairly complex task of describing circuits and electricity with numbers and mathematical relationships. This reading will be used to summarize the use of Ohm’s law in a practical setting (will this amount of volts kill me or not?) as well as hopefully motivate interest by being about something the students are interested in (Pokémon). This reading will prepare and (hopefully) motivate the reader for a following set of simple Pokémon-related practice problems applying Ohm’s Law, and with the students doing the calculations this time, they will find out which other electric-type Pokémon are deadly or harmless.

Some words in the article that might need explaining are: Faraday cage

The content words in the article are: electricity, voltage, current, milliamps, resistance, Volts, Ohms, Amps.

The students will have already been exposed to the content words by the time they read the text.