“Electric Car: American Industry and
Innovation”
Science Lesson Plan
is a feature of
A daily news broadcast for High School and Middle School students
now under development by MacNeil/Lehrer Productions
“Electric Car: American Industry and Innovation”
Science Lesson Plan
Table of Contents
Letter to the Educator...................................................................................... 1
“Electric Car: American Industry and Innovation” Science Lesson Plan ...... 2
©
Winter, 2009
Dear Educator,
the.News online video reports for the.Gov provide middle and high school students with a valuable exercise in science,
social studies and language arts. This video report on the “Electric Car: American Industry and Innovation” at
www.pbs.org/newshour/thenews/thegov explores how this new technology is driving development of the electric car and
public policy. Lesson plans for social studies, science and language arts are available in the “For Educators” section of the
website. All videos and curricula have been informed by the.News instructional design that can be found on the website
www.pbs.org/newshour/thenews. the.Gov is open-captioned. The curriculum includes content-based standards, discussion
questions, student activities, vocabulary and primary reference sources. A complete transcript of each video report
includes time codes to assist in isolating specific segments of the video. This material is presented as options to fit
teachers’ instructional needs.
We have also added, starting with this video segment, references to Larry Bell’s “The 12 Powerful Words.” Relevant
“powerful words” are highlighted in bold in the lesson plans and in the transcript (to denote where they are used in the
video segment).
We welcome our new partners at the Omaha Public Schools who have joined the.News in a special pilot p