Celebrating CCEW 2024 with New Teaching Resources

By AACT on April 21, 2024

To promote the positive role that chemistry plays in the world, ACS established the Chemists Celebrate Earth Week (CCEW) public awareness campaign. During CCEW, ACS members and chemistry enthusiasts celebrate by coordinating events and communicating the importance of chemistry.

This year the 2024 CCEW theme is all about Batteries. During the week of April 21-27, celebrate this theme and Get a Charge out of Chemistry!

In honor of CCEW, AACT offered a lesson plan contest for K–12 teachers of chemistry, encouraging participants to submit teaching ideas related to the theme. This year, two winners were selected—one from the high school level, and one from the middle school level.

Congratulations to Isabella Liu, from University of Toronto Schools in Toronto, Canada, Jennifer Smith, from Mahomet-Seymour Junior High School in Mahomet, Illinois, and Alexa Jackson from Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Charging Up the Fun with a Rechargeable Battery: This lesson is designed for high school students to learn how oxidation and reduction reactions work in a rechargeable battery. They will then build a simple rechargeable battery and test it to determine the strength of the battery.

What's in a Battery?: This lesson is designed for middle school students to learn about the raw materials that are used to create batteries and the locations on Earth where they can be found. Students will also explore battery recycling options and brainstorm ways to reduce battery waste.

Modeling the Basic Structure of a Lithium-Ion Battery: In this activity young students will build a simplified model of a lithium ion battery. The model will include “lithium ions” that can be observed moving between the cathode and anode. During the activity students will learn the difference between energy storage and energy conversion, and that batteries are amazing because they do both.

As a bonus, the AACT team also designed a new activity to align with the 2024 CCEW theme. Modeling Electron Movement in a Rechargeable Battery is designed for students to model the electron movement in a rechargeable lithium-ion battery that is found in a cellphone. This model will include understanding the mechanisms of charging and discharging.

Additionally, teachers can use the lessons, labs, activities, and multimedia resources from the AACT Resource Library that also support this year’s CCEW theme:

High School:

Middle School:

Elementary School:

Finally, check out these ChemMatters magazine articles related to the theme for even more ideas: