What You Can Do At School
to Save Electricity

There are many fun ways for you to help save electricity in your school. On this page, you'll learn you can do anything from forming an energy club to hanging up posters.  Try to pick at least one thing you're willing to try, so you'll make a difference!

  • Ask your teacher for permission to start a S.E.E.K. or an “Energy Club” or “Energy Patrol” at your school.  At the meetings, you can discuss ways that your school can conserve energy.  You could also check on the progress of the whole school in terms of saving energy.
  • Write a letter to your community’s newspaperNewspaper to tell them about what your club is doing.
  • Have each class name an energy helper.  This person will check on their classmates and see if they are turning off computers, lights, overheads, projection units, and other electronic machines when they are not using them.
  • Do an “energy audit” in your school. Walk around the building and look for ways that energy can be conserved.
  • Write tips for saving electricity and put them in your school newspaper or newsletter.  You could also read these tips during your school’s announcements.
  • Give a presentation about energy at your school's PTA meeting, a school board meeting, or to the school district administration.
  • Teach younger students what you are learning about the environment, energy, and conserving electricity.
  • Share energy information with your school through the use of the arts (music, art, dance, and drama).
  • Bring home information to your family about energy conservation and energy efficiency.
  • Make an educational display about energy, electricity, and conservation for your school.
  • Write a survey about energy awareness and give it out to staff and students in your school.  Ask them if they turn off lights, computers, etc. when they leave the rooms and if they do other things to save electricity at school.
  • Ask your principal to answer a survey about your school building regarding energy use, heating, cooling, lighting, etc. There are surveys for various grade levels on the U.S. government's Energy Kids Page. Closed Classroom Door
  • Keep all classroom and office doors closed to keep heat and air conditioning in the rooms.
  • Keep lights off in rooms, hallways, and bathrooms as much as possible before and after school.
  • Turn the heat down after school and on weekends.
  • Make energy savings posters to put up throughout your school.  These posters will show the word “OFF” with an arrow pointing down.  Put these posters by light switches, computers, and TV’s.
  • Do an interview with energy professionals in your community and write about your interview in your school paper.
  • Have all of the students in your school sign a “Declaration of Energy Independence.”  This is a pledge or promise you can make about conserving energy and helping the environment. 
  • Give each upper grade student in your school a copy of the “Energy Hog Challenge Student Guide.”  This is a great booklet that has energy information, a survey to check on how much energy you now use, a scavenger hunt, a family pledge, etc.  It is a fun way to teach kids about saving electricity.  There is even a Teacher's Guide for your teacher that goes along with the student book.
  • Run a contest between classrooms to keep track of the amount of energy savings that each classroom achieves.  Make graphs of the results and post them in the hallways.
  • Ask your principal if landscaping could be done if necessary.  Landscaping should be done in appropriate locations so that your school could be more energy efficient.  An example would be to plant trees that could shade the rooms on the sunniest side of the building.
  • Make projects for an “Energy Conservation Science Fair.”

“Declaration of Energy Independence.” Energy Quest.  7 February 2007 <http://www.energyquest.ca.gov/library/ben/ben8.html>.
 
“Energy Activities for Teachers and Students.” Energy Information Administration.  11 February 2007 <http://eia.doe.gov/kids/
classactivities/teachers&students.html>.

“Energy Hog Challenge Student Guide.” Energy Hog. 7 February 2007 <http://EnergyHog.org/pdf/studentguide.pdf>.

“Energy Saving Activities for Schools.” Alliance to Save Energy. 
7 February 2007 <http://www.ase.org/content/article/detail/63>.

“How You Can Save Energy.” tvakids.com 7 February 2007 <http://www.tvakids.com/electricity/conservation.htm>.

Images

Permission to use all of the photographs on this page is granted  under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License or images are in the public domain from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia.  <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page> (March, 2007).

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