UPD8

Smart Energy

Learning objectives

Personal Capability Objectives:
Tenacity – to avoid giving up easily
Communication – to justify opinions.
Science Objective:
To use scientific information and ideas to inform discussion and decisions.

Try the activity

• Smart Energy Activity
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• Smart Energy Teacher Notes
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You will need Acrobat Reader installed to open the activity sheets.

Curriculum link

Ages 11-14

KS3 Science National Curriculum (from September 2008)

Key concepts: Applications and implications of science
1.2a - Exploring how the creative application of scientific ideas can bring about technological developments and consequent changes in the way people think and behave.

Key processes: Communication
2.3a - Use appropriate methods to communicate scientific information and contribute to presentations and discussions about scientific issues.

Range and content
3.1a - Energy
3.4c - Human activity and natural processes can lead to changes in the environment.

Running the activity

Introducing the Task
• Use page 1 to introduce the context. Get students' immediate feelings about how they feel about making a doorstep pitch.
• Display page 2, and tell students they are responsible for promoting the Smart Meter concept. If you wish, give each group a copy of this page.
• Give each small group a copy of page 3. Students use the information from this page along with page 2 to help plan their pitches.
• Pupils rehearse and then perform their pitch to peers; peers rate the pitches for effectiveness.

Reviewing the Task
• Discuss how students made sure that their pitch had impact. Ask for instances where they used scientific information to inform their decisions.
• Get students to review the task using the assessment for learning Smart Grid (Page 4).

Dilemmas
The dilemmas sheet (page 5) is a basis for discussion about situations where individuals or organisations have to make decisions – and possibly compromises – about environmental issues. Individual 'dilemmas' could be allocated firstly to pairs, then to teams of 4 to 6 and then fed back to the whole class. The class could be encouraged to set up a dilemmas board to extend those shown on the sheet. Students would add additional dilemmas and their suggested responses.

Make a Difference
The make a difference task is an online task using page 6 as support and the web based BBC energy calculator. The activity encourages pupils to think of electricity generation in a balanced way weighing up projected costs for electricity against environmental impact.

Web links

News links

BBC Electricity Calculator

The BBC Online Electricity Calculator can be used to support the Make a Difference activity on page 6 of this task.

The electricity calculator gives students the opportunity to choose how you would like the UK's electricity to be generated in 2020.

Reviews & Comments

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