Teach With the Book What's So Bad About Gasoline

Teaching About Fossil Fuels While Offering Green Energy Choices

Jul 25, 2009

This book explains the science of fossil fuels while also covering the history of gasoline and oil production. It gives ideas for renewable energy for transportation.

Both parents and teachers want to give children the tools for a better life. The book What's So Bad About Gasoline helps students develop clear understandings of cause and effect about fossil fuels. It allows educators to teach across the curriculum regarding fuel and transportation in both the past and the future.

Use a circular table or put a large circle of paper on a bulletin board to represent the world. Students can write lists or sentences about fossil fuels emphasizing cause and effect. Each sentence should be in this pattern:

"There are more respiratory problems in big cities because __________________________."

To extend the activity, some students may choose to make posters or write reports showing cause and effect about fossil fuels. Children can make posters or booklets to tell the life story of fossil fuels. Some students may do research on oil spills, using the book and other sources, and then give a team or individual report.

A time line may be used with sequential order instead of dates. This can trace society's use of petroleum products over the years. They can either study a particular one of the oil companies, or study the industry as a whole. This can be done by the whole class or in small groups.

Make a classroom list called "The Price of Pollution." List negative effects of pollution including respiratory and other health problems. Discuss how being a good citizen may affect the future. Include such topics as types of cars, recycling, reusing, reducing, and alternative energy sources.

Use Venn diagrams to compare two modern cars, gasoline and hybrid. Students can also use a Venn diagram to compare and contrast fuels, like a gasoline engine versus an electric engine.

Students may write a historical fiction set in the future with two approaches: one with keeping the status quo in energy sources and the other reflecting society's growing use of sustainable energy.

The class may also develop a bulletin board on sustainable energy, using drawings, charts, graphs, cause and effect statements, and mini-posters to share information learned about global warming and the energy future as they see it.

Using world maps and the book What's So Bad About Gasoline, have students color the five top oil producing nations one color and the top five consumers another as reported in the book. Use colors like blue and red (makes purple) or yellow and red (makes orange) since there will be an overlapping country.

This book, What's So Bad About Gasoline, is not just academic information, although that is quite clear within the text. It also provides cause and effect information students need to enable them to grow up as responsible stewards of the earth, especially regarding gasoline and the need for renewable fuels. This book can be taught across the curriculum using science, writing, and social studies including geography. Students emerge from these studies with a respect for and better understanding of the need for sustainable energy.

Rockwell, Anne and Meisel, Paul, Illustrator. What's So Bad About Gasoline? New York: Collins, 2009.

The copyright of the article Teach With the Book What's So Bad About Gasoline in Curricula/Lesson Plans is owned by Hildra Tague. Permission to republish Teach With the Book What's So Bad About Gasoline in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.