Grade: Grade 6 Science and Social Studies classes
Campaign Name: Energy Wonders
Campaign Description: École Cardinal Léger School’s Grade 6 combined Science and Social Studies classes. We looked at Sustainability in the area of Energy. Our project mainly revolved around a lights audit. Our audit was based on 26 classes and compared our results twice.
Between our first and second audit, therefore because of our awareness campaigns, our school has prevented 21 kg of CO2 from being emitted in the atmosphere by having more lights turned off. Our first numbers were 162.8025817 and our last numbers were 142.1252817, for a difference of 20.6773kg of CO2.
Our actions involved 9 awareness raising campaigns, all aimed at reducing our Carbon footprint at school: An assembly on climate change (over 300 students), a Sweater Day (18 degrees inside the school for a whole day in February, for over 500 students), Recess Power (no lights during recess), Time off (which class will have the least energy consumption over 5 days – winners had 1 hour and 23 minutes of turned on lights over 5 days, there were 7 classes entered), Turn off the monitors, EcoGreen Challenge (get a chance to win a draw by having your name submitted for having turned off the lights), Time our for staff (aiming at reducing the light-on time for staff before and after school) and a battery drive (just starting now, already having hundreds of batteries collected in one week), and the building of a 45w 12v solar panel (in process).
We worked on inquiry based learning projects on electricity and electronic energy monitoring. 50 students monitored electric appliances at home and at school, 1 student monitored an electronic meter via an in-house display, and we had projects on hydro-electricity, a model eco-village (wind, solar and water), a solar oven, an electroscope, as well as projects on electric eels and static electricity.
Finally, we uploaded a 15 minute video-documentary, called Energy Wonders, on vimeo, documenting our inquiry journey into sustainability and energy.