Basic Elementary Curriculum Unit

INTRODUCTORY ACTIVITIES

Elementary Energy Poll
Energy Polls can be used to assess students’ basic energy knowledge, as well as their opinions about energy before and after your classroom energy unit.

Energy Games and Icebreakers
This guide contains offers entertaining activities to introduce energy, efficiency, and conservation to students, as well as reinforce the information that has already been presented. Video of Energy Chants

STEP ONE: Science of Energy

Elementary Energy Infobook
Energy Infobooks are the resource for many NEED activities and include an introduction to energy, information on major sources of energy, new technologies, energy conservation, electricity, climate change, and other energy information. They are available on four reading levels and are revised and updated annually.

Elementary Science of Energy
These guides include background information and hands-on experiments to explore the different forms of energy and how energy is transformed from one form to another. Groups of students master six stations, then teach others about the energy transformations at their stations. Teacher demonstrations are included to introduce the unit. Reinforcement activities are also included. The stations include equipment to teach transformations focusing on kinetic and potential energy, heat, light, motors, batteries, and electromagnetism.

EnergyWorks Teacher Guide
EnergyWorks Student Guide
The EnergyWorks guides include backgroun information and hands-on experiments that explore motion, light, sound, heat, growth, and powering technology.

STEP TWO: Sources of Energy

Elementary Energy Infobook Activities
These guides are companion activities to the Energy Infobooks. They are available on four reading levels that correspond to the infobooks and include Teacher Guides and answer keys for general energy information, energy sources, electricity, and conservation.

Energy in the Balance
This activity introduces elementary students to the advantages and disadvantages of the major energy sources through a series of critical thinking, charting, and graphing activities.

STEP THREE: Electricity and Magnetism

ElectroWorks Teacher Guide
ElectroWorks Student Guide
This guide includes background information and hands-on experiments to explore the basic concepts of atomic structure and electricity. Included are center-based experiments on static electricity, batteries, magnets, electromagnetism, and circuits.

STEP FOUR: Transportation

Elementary Transportation Fuels Infobook
Students explore conventional and alternative transportation fuels such as petroleum-based fuels, ethanol, electricity, biodiesel, compressed natural gas, and propane. Student backgrounders and suggested activities are included.

STEP FIVE: Efficiency and Conservation

School Energy Inspectors Teacher Guide
School Energy Inspectors Student Guide
Students are introduced to methods of measuring energy consumption, determining costs, and quantifying environmental effects through a series of hands-on activities that use the school building as a learning laboratory. Students conduct surveys of the school building and school energy consumption— gathering, recording, and analyzing data, and monitoring energy usage. The kit includes a Teacher Guide, class set of Student Guides, and the materials necessary to conduct the activities.

Energy Conservation Contract
In this outreach activity, students learn about energy conservation and ask their families to sign contracts in which they agree to save energy. Students then calculate the energy savings, and re- evaluate their conservation measures.

STEP SIX: Synthesis and Reinforcement

Energy Carnival
NEED’s popular carnival games are an excellent way to encourage students and adults to think about energy. The Energy Carnival contains complete instructions and reproducible masters for ten carnival games. The Carnival is ideal for elementary or middle school students and makes an excellent activity for an energy fair or Earth Day celebration.

STEP SEVEN: Evaluation

Question Bank
As you develop your energy unit, it may be helpful to build your own energy assessments. NEED’s Question Bank allows educators to customize evaluations to fit the needs of their students. Questions are available at the four levels, and are divided by topic. Within each topic, various formats of questions are included, such as knowledge, comprehension, multiple choice, and higher-order thinking formatted questions. Feel free to select from many different categories to tailor the assessment for your student. Questions are provided at four grade levels for a variety of energy topics in easy to access word documents.