“WATTS up Mr. House”
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Lesson Plans
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Teacher: Mr. Brewer, Susan LaVorgna Elementary School, Temecula Valley Unified School District
Overview
This lesson is designed to be a kick off activity to engage and motivate the students, while fully involving parents and community members. The purpose is to help students and parents understand that by making some small, yet simple changes within your home, it can reduce electricity consumption in your home by nearly half.
- Objectives:
- Students and parents will have a better understanding of how much electricity they use
- Students and parents will understand how changing their light bulbs from incandescent to CFL (compact florescent lights) or LED (light emitting diode) can save money and the environment.
- Students will conduct a survey at the beginning of the school year and at the end of the school year to evaluate program outcomes.
- Students will demonstrate an understanding and knowledge of the types of light bulbs available and the benefits of each.
- Depending on what outcomes you or your school site is looking for every grade level may see different possibilities for this unit. Students can write about their outcomes on paper, use a blog, or start a community discussion board.
- Students could focus on the mathematical implications of this project looking at cost savings, harmful relationships concerning the incandescent light bulbs when they burn out etc.
- Subjects: Math, Science, Writing, Reading
- Suggested Grade Level: K-12
- California Standards Addressed:
- Students model, represent, and interpret number relationships to create and solve problems involving addition and subtraction
- Statistics, Data Analysis, and Probability
- 1.0: Students collect numerical data and record, organize, display, and interpret the data on bar graphs and other representations
- 1.0: Students make decisions about how to set up a problem
- Because the applications are limitless, the applicable standards are limited only by the imagination of the students, teachers, parents, and community members involved
- Time: 1 school year
Materials
- The materials needed, will really be up to the school that is conducting the survey. It could be as simple as a single page survey or as complex as an online (Survey Monkey) type survey and could ask only a few or many detailed questions
Preparation and Background
- First you must establish the outcomes you and your school are searching for.
- We wanted to know how much our students and their parents knew about CFL, LED and other cost saving light bulbs. We were also looking to see how many parents were aware of the possible savings associated with these types of lights
- A survey to establish a baseline (to be done as homework in multiple classes throughout the school to help ensure its return)
- Contact local companies or sports teams in the area to help do the kick-off.
- Prepare a letter to go home letting parents know you are seeking the information as a way to help and a teaching tool, not to invade privacy
Procedure
- The start of the program should come near the beginning of the school year in order to achieve the most buy in from students and community.
- Hold a school wide rally to kick the event off. Make sure you have some crazy and catchy name that the students and parents will enjoy. (Our school district has a local Minor League Baseball team that visits once a year to talk to the students about going green. Their mascot, “Thunder,” is the perfect way to get the students motivated and excited about this project.)
- Create a survey that will ask the students to gather information about their home with regards to electricity use, recycling habits, and look at current appliances in the home and see if they are STAR Energy Rated, and the number of people living in the home.
- As a school, decide on the day to send the survey home and come up with an expected due date. I would suggest a normal 1 week turnaround period. Also it would be helpful to send the survey home on a Wednesday in order for parents to be involved over the weekend.
- Students will be asked to identify all of the lighting fixtures in their home along with the specific type of light bulb being used. Lower grade students could be given a chart with pictures on it of the different types of bulbs to help them be more self sufficient in their efforts. (The idea however is to have this be a FAMILY EFFORT!)
- Students will also be asked to work with their parents to evaluate their energy use over the past year. In other words, how much did they spend last year on electricity? They could even look at breaking this information down into individual months. Southern California Edison already does this for us on our monthly bill so this should be relatively easy to accomplish. This will be necessary to help see what changes have happened when the survey is redone during the second to last month of the school year.
- The main thrust of this lesson is in the beginning of the school year collecting the data, and then again at the end of the year when you will need to gather your Green Team to evaluate the second survey information and hopefully you as well as your students and parents will see a healthy savings.
- During the school year several assemblies should be planned to help students better understand how to save electricity, make our planet a greener one, and find ways to make it a better place to live. This will help to keep the purpose of the survey fresh in their minds.
For Discussion
- Immediately following the initial Kick-Off Rally, teachers and students should discuss the survey itself and spend as much time as needed deciding on how the survey is to be done.
- Hopefully the discussion that occurs at the end of the year will show our students and parents how much money they have saved and how it’s the little things that we do that make a larger impression on our planet.
Extensions
- This is up to the district and or individual sites, and the possibilities are limitless!
