Classroom Energy Diet 2019

My grade 6 and 7 students are participating in the 2019 Classroom Energy Diet .  The challenge encourages classrooms across Canada to complete challenges to conserve energy and raise awareness about energy consumption.   We've learned quite a lot over the last several weeks and the challenges have inspired us to read, write, research and create!  I like that this kind of contest can be a springboard for meaningful learning or even project-based learning.    I wanted to share some of the great work my students have done as part of their contest.

Recycled Art

The task was to create art from recycling and my Grade 6/7 Character Education class rose to the challenge!  I kept this challenge fairly unstructured and let students plan their design, find the recycling items and develop their own creations as individuals or in small groups.   We ended up with a wonderful variety of art projects, including:  

• cardboard creations: a robot, a barn, a miniature city, Angry birds from toilet paper rolls
• cardboard canvases: students painted on recycled cardboard instead canvas or art paper
• paper mache from recycled newspaper
• pencil holders made from toilet paper rolls or plastic bottles
• a bird feeder made from a plastic bottle

One Hour, No Power

We've been turning off our lights, computers and power bars when we don't need to use devices to reduce energy consumption in our classroom and we challenged other classrooms to try it too! 

A student-created poster promoting One Hour, No Power

Energy-Saving Tips

For this challenge, we were tasked with researching energy-saving tips and sharing them in our school or online.   I provided a planning template to guide students in selecting a product to create, identifying a target audience and a platform for sharing.  Some students decided to create posters to share in our hallways and others created digital posters to share online.  One group wrote energy saving tips to share on our school's digital sign and another group presented to students at the elementary school.  One group launched a "game" and social media campaign - they posted small notes with energy-saving tips around the school and encouraged students to find the tips, photograph them and share them on social media.   

Energy Saving Tips inspired from @olcskinders.  @HamiotaSchools @Energy_Lit pic.twitter.com/ycE4VoUhlr

— Mrs. Obach's Class (@MrsObachsClass) April 11, 2019

Here are some tips for saving energy please share. #EnergyDietChallenge #parkwestSD pic.twitter.com/ZcDNDIwtuN

— Mrs. Obach's Class (@MrsObachsClass) April 10, 2019

One Hour, No Power - We met our goal!

We have been working on reducing our energy consumption through the One Hour, No Power challenge as part of our Classroom Energy Diet.  Students chose to aim for 10 hours without power to achieve the highest level for this challenge.  For this challenge, the description stated "One hour of no power is defined as one classroom not using power for one hour. That is to say, if you have two classrooms participating for one hour each, that will equal two hours of no power. If you have three classrooms participating and they all complete three hours, that would be nine hours of no power."  When I read that description, students had some ideas of how to meet their goal...

 In order to meet our goal, we got other classrooms involved in the challenge.  Students decided to reach out to classrooms via Twitter and also ask the other classes in our schools to participate.  We tallied our results today and we were able to accumulate 11 hours without power!  I am really proud of the Grade 1s for their great work and for their efforts to encourage other classrooms to get involved in this challenge!

Track Your Trash Challenge

Our latest Classroom Energy Diet Challenge focuses on tracking our garbage and finding ways to reduce the amount of trash we create in our classroom.  We are learning about measurement right now, so measuring the amount of trash fit well with our current math goals.  Our class is good at using a balance scale for comparative measurement, but we had to learn to use a different scale to measure the amount of garbage in our classroom garbage cans.  I purchased a new bathroom scale to try, but our garbage was too light to register on the scale, so we had to do some problem solving and try different scales.  The best tool for the task turned out to be a kitchen scale and our garbage weigh in was 1044g. 

The next step was for us to decide how we could reduce the amount of trash we create.  Students had a lot of suggestions for how we could accomplish this goal:

Follow us on Twitter @MrsObachsClass for updates on our trash reduction goal!  

Day 1 went really well with our changes resulting in a BIG decrease in the amount of garbage we generated.  We only had 280 grams of trash and our recycling bin was overflowing!  

Our latest project: The Classroom Energy Diet Challenge

Our latest project work has a little different twist than our usual project based learning format.  If you are a teacher using PBL or considering PBL, keep in mind that a challenge or contest can be a great way to incorporate a project into your teaching!  We have been participating in the Classroom Energy Diet Challenge, which is a contest for K-12 students that encourages energy awareness and energy-saving actions. 

There are key components that I like to include in our projects and this challenge includes a number of those elements:
 
Student Choice:

• Students decided to be a part of the competition (I didn't sign us up and tell students they had to do the challenge).  When I received an email about the challenge, I explained it to my students, we held a class discussion and our class decided it was an activity they'd like to take part in.
• Each challenge has different point levels for different actions.  We discuss these options and students choose the point level they are aiming for (which is also a great goal-setting activity!)

Students Making a Difference:

•   The actions that students are taking impact our school and community.  For example, we turned off energy-consuming items to save energy as a part of the Do you really need it? challenge and we are aiming to reduce the amount of garbage in our classroom our latest challenge.  

Going Beyond the Classroom

• Students worked at home with their families to identify energy-consuming items that they could turn off to save power.  
• Via email, Skype and Twitter, our class has invited other classrooms and schools to help save energy by participating in our One Hour, No Power challenge.  (We'd be happy if your school, classroom or workplace could help us with this challenge - contact us or comment to participate!)

 

Energy Diet Challenge

Here are our trackers from our first challenge Do you really need it?   Everyone tracked their energy consumption and agreed to give up 1 energy-consuming "want" for 4 days to help save energy!

And as a side note, I guess I was hoping it was a leap year because I typed "February 29th" on our trackers instead of March 1st!   Ooops!  I only realized this once I'd already uploaded everything :(

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Get your own

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!