I stand before a classroom of eager 5th graders. “How come the lights go on,” I ask them? They respond: “Wires.” “The switch.” Rarely someone says “Something to do with a power plant.” As the discussion progresses, I am reminded again that most fifth graders don’t know where our energy comes from. So how could they make informed decisions based on clear information and carefully gathered evidence?

Thinking about how to connect this new information with what students already knew, I realized that I could relate the energy class to certain concepts in the standard curriculum:  photosynthesis, forms of energy, electro-magnets, and electrical circuits. Building upon what they already had studied, kids quickly connected the relevance of the topic of energy to what they hear in the news and from their families.

For the last two years, I’ve been teaching our Energy Investigations curriculum to students and teachers in grades 5 to 8. I’ve found both teachers and students to be consistently enthusiastic about the topic. Kids and teachers know that this topic is very relevant to their lives. In addition, I find the generation of electricity fascinating and I think I pass my fascination on to the students. One of the most engaging parts of these lessons is when kids experiment with generating electricity using mini-solar panels and wind turbines. Given a little time, students start exploring alternatives, stretching the possibilities of these materials. I often imagine I’m looking at our future scientists and engineers.

I want students to see the big picture behind electrical energy: Plants that lived hundreds of millions of years ago sequestered carbon through photosynthesis. Those buried plants (and some animals) became oil, coal and natural gas. These resources must be extracted, transported and processed to become fuel for power plants. The carbon that was stored in those ancient plants is then released back to the atmosphere through combustion in service of human needs, binding with oxygen and becoming carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas. Do we think of this big picture when we flip a light switch or use an appliance? Maybe that’s a little extreme, but I hope that we are all starting to practice more of this big picture, everything’s related, systems thinking.

One of our firmly-held beliefs about education is that kids need to be empowered rather than feel helpless in the face of environmental issues. So our energy lessons don’t stop with the carbon cycle and the “bad news.” We move on to alternative energy and conservation. Kids consistently come up with great ways they can conserve energy at home and school. One reason I like to focus on electrical energy is that kids can take significant actions to reduce their use of it.

Teaching the Energy Investigations classes has been one of the most satisfying experiences of my 23 years here at Hitchcock. We continue to seek funding to bring these classes to more schools.

	Questions or comments?       E-mail us at info@hitchcockcenter.org.
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