Hands-on 'drilling' lab and oil well

Megan Michael of Urbana High School found the OOGEEP teacher workshop helpful in covering state standards for her Environmental Science class. She said, "As a teacher, this workshop gave me new ideas to teach lessons in a hands-on and STEM process method. Topics like oil formation and oil drilling would typically be hard concepts to provide labs with and OOGEEP provided me with some great options for hands-on activities."

First, Michael introduced the topics of drilling and well stimulation with slides and the OOGEEP video that corresponds to this topic. Then the students did the Sweet Explorations activity with the twinkies, followed by reflection questions as well as a Venn diagram to compare and contrast.

Michael said, "The activity went well! I really think it helped students understand the concept. Several students said they liked the activity and we also had a good discussion on what other materials could be used to demonstrate this same concept. A few of their ideas included similar snack cakes (chocolate ho-ho's), lava cake, different pudding/jello layers, cracker/pudding layers and an ice cream sandwich."

For the "Build a Model Oil Well" activity, Michael showed a short OOGEEP video from YouTube of a model that worked. She said, "They still had to do some figuring out on their own. I found this to be a good mixture of still allowing their creativity, but giving them some structure and guidance."