UNITED UTITLIES ELECTRICITY LESSON PLANS KS 2
The United Utilities Friend Ship: United Utilities
Aims To give the children more information about how electricity travels to our homes, and the things we use it for. To enable the children to make informed choices about their use of electricity. Objectives To find out where electricity comes from, what we use it for and what happens when we waste it, through drama, literacy and teamwork. Contents of Chest 1. Snakes and Ladders board, dice, and counters 2. Photographs 3. Jigsaws 4. Poem 5. Template for Activity 4 6. Blankets 1
Introduction This Treasure Chest has been put together by United Utilities Education Team to explore what electricity is used for, how it is generated, and how it gets to our homes. Activity 1 explores where electricity comes from. Activity 2 explores how electricity travels to our homes. Activity 3 explores what we use electricity for. Activity 4 explores how many things rely on electricity to work. Activity 5 explores what happens as we generate electricity, and why we should conserve it. If you would like further activities or information on electricity, please see our website, www.unitedutilities.com, which has a set of fully downloadable resources. 2
Activity 1 Where does electricity come from? Resources: Snakes and Ladders game, counters and dice; Photographs of electricity generation Show the children the various photographs of electricity generation. Do they know what any of them are? Can they fit them into two categories renewable and non-renewable? Renewable: wind turbine, hydro-electric dam, solar panel, geothermal power plant. Non-renewable: coal, oil and gas fired power stations, nuclear reactor. Ask the children to split into groups, where they can play the Snakes and Ladders game. 3
Activity 2 How does electricity travel to your home? Resources: Poem; Jigsaws Find out if the children know how electricity arrives at their houses. Generator (Power Station/WindTurbine) > Grid substation > wires on pylons > main substation > wires on wooden poles or underground > local substation > underground cables to houses. Ask the children to assemble the jigsaws in groups. Ask five children to read the poem. When all the jigsaws are complete, they can be assembled on the floor into one big floor puzzle, showing the journey as stated in the poem. NB There is no jigsaw for the grid substation, but there is a danger of death sign jigsaw. Throughout this activity please stress the dangers of electricity. The pylons, poles and substations all have a yellow danger of death sign on them because electricity can be very dangerous. Vandalised street lights or bus shelters can have live wires of 240 volts in them. Touching these can kill. Electricity is useful to us in so many ways, but if do not treat it with respect, it can kill. 4
Activity 3 What is electricity? What do we use it for? Resources: paper and pencils Ask the class how we make things that use electricity work. We can use a switch, plug an appliance into the wall, or use batteries. Ask the children to make a long list of everything they would miss if there was suddenly no electricity. This could either be a class list, or in groups. Split the class into groups. Each group has to choose something from the list and mime it to the rest of the class. The rest of the class has to guess what they are miming. 5
Activity 4 Are your teachers dinosaurs? Resources: Whiteboard/blackboard; Template Use the template to draw up a chart on the whiteboard / blackboard. Ask the class to suggest things that the teachers may have had when they were the same age as the class, that used electricity. Fill in the chart. This activity works really well if there are teachers from different generations present. Even a gap of 10 years can make a huge difference in the number of items that were available, and it can be a big surprise to the children that some people grew up without a television, refrigerator or microwave. Explain to the children that because there has been a huge increase in the number of items around us that use electricity, we are needing to generate more electricity to power these things. Go over the chart in a different colour, indicating those items that the teachers have now and if there is more than one of those items in the house. 6
Activity 5 What happens if we waste electricity? Resources: Blankets Ask four or five children to sit or stand together in a small circle. They represent the world. Ask the class what items they have used that day that used electricity. For each item, put a blanket over the world. When all the blankets have been used up, ask the world how they are feeling. Hopefully they will reply hot! Take the blankets off the children. Explain to the class that every time we switch something on that uses electricity, we are putting a blanket of gases around the world. If the world gets too hot under these blankets then all the animals and plants will start dying, and our weather will start changing. We should try to remember to switch things off when we are not using them, and to see if we can get our energy from cleaner i.e. renewable sources, to try to slow down the number of blankets being added to the world. The children might like to make turn off light notices etc., or similar, for the school, or for home. 7