Classroom Energy Diet: Do you really need it?

I received an email about the Classroom Energy Diet Challenge earlier this year.  Since my students have choices about their project learning each year, I asked students if they'd be interested taking part.  After some discussion, we decided that we'd sign up for the challenge.  The challenge began as we were in the midst of our Olympics project, so we are just getting started with our challenges now.  K-12 students across the country are working to increase energy awareness and we are excited to be a part of this work!   I hope you will follow us on our journey.

Our first challenge, called Do you really need it?, is currently underway.  We learned about needs versus wants and discussed some of the things we use that require energy.  Students are now tracking their energy use for 3 days and identifying needs vs. wants in terms of their energy consumption.  Next, students have agreed to give up one energy-consuming "want" for 4 days in order to save energy.  We will share our tracking once we've completed this challenge.  If you'd like to join this activity, please download the tracker here and adjust it to fit your needs.  We'd love to hear about your learning activities and energy-saving changes!