Looking at energy and climate change at William Patten School and at Benthal School
Climate change can be a complex idea to understand, but the work we did with a Year 5 class at William Patten Primary School helped pupils grasp what it was about and how they could help.
Over five weeks, they learned about how we produce and use energy, along with some of the consequences of releasing excess carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Pupils wondered where in the world the effects of climate change were being felt, and using maps and picture cards they discovered that climate change is happening not just in the developing world or at the poles, but everywhere.
But what can we do about that? One simple answer is to look at the way we use energy ourselves. Pupils looked around their classroom to identify where electricity was being wasted, and then measured how much electricity was used by leaving their projector on standby. They carried out an energy review right across the school, developing an achievable action plan for saving energy and sharing it with the rest of the school community.
After completing their review the students started action planning. They started an energy-saving campaign at school to save money and reduce CO2 emissions – a win-win situation. And they wrote to people who could help, including their head teacher and the Prime Minister! A whole school assembly shared their findings with staff and pupils, and we hope that William Patten has now become an energy-saving school thanks to those investigative Year 5 pupils.
Over a packed 5-week programme, Year 5 pupils at Benthal Primary School investigated energy and learned how electricity is generated by burning fossil fuels. They looked at how we use (and waste) energy and what effect burning fossil fuels and releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere has on the world’s climate.
The pupils found out about power plants and how they work – from burning fossil fuels in furnaces to steam turbines turning electricity generators and pylons carrying electricity across the countryside. We looked at alternative ways of generating electricity too, including solar, tidal and wind power.
But the bottom line for every school is finding ways of saving energy, and the pupils researched different ways of doing this, including playing with a number of different energy toys – they particularly enjoyed the wind-up MP3 player which built up their muscle power!
After conducting a simple review of energy use across the school, the pupils started an energy-saving campaign with a whole-school assembly. They wrote some very persuasive letters to opinion-formers within the school and elsewhere, and designed some of the best posters we’ve seen yet… Great work, Year 5!
Energy and climate change workshops
