Sunlight Is Now Powering the World

How do we turn sunlight into electricity? This one-page activity uses a real, current story - the rise of solar power - to make an energy transformation concrete. Every solar panel is a tiny energy transformer: it changes radiant energy (sunlight) into electrical energy that powers homes, schools, and cities. In 2025, solar grew faster than any other energy source and became the world's biggest source of new electricity for the first time.

What's Included

• 1 student page: a short news story plus four cards (What's the Story? multiple choice with a quick true/false, a fill-in energy chain with word bank, Cause & Effect matching, and a Why Does It Matter? sentence starter)
• 1 teacher key page with every answer, a sample response, the standards box, clickable links to the source articles, and a science-connection summary
• Letter-size PDF, no prep

How It Helps You Teach

• Makes the radiant-to-electrical transformation concrete and current
• Reinforces conservation of energy - the energy is changed, not created
• The article links support media literacy and let you show students the source

Pair It With

Part of an Energy Transformations set: Context Clues, Inferences, Science in the News, the Name the Transformation sort, and a Reading in Science. Check out our library for the rest.

Perfect for 6th grade physical science, a current-events science reading and reading comprehension activity, science literacy, and TEKS 6.8B review. Topics include: solar power, energy transformation, radiant energy, electrical energy, renewable energy, and conservation of energy.

Standards: TEKS 6.8B; NGSS DCI PS3.B (Conservation of Energy and Energy Transfer). Part of the Daily Science series by Workybooks.