Through a grant from Dominion, NEED and the Science Museum of Virginia partnered to design and deliver Energy in Virginia to Virginia’s teachers and students. The new curriculum module adds Virginia information and energy data to NEED’s energy materials and includes a new learning map of Virginia’s energy infrastructure, lessons and activities, and new exhibits at the Science Museum of Virginia in Richmond, VA. To launch the new program, NEED and SMV hosted a one-day teacher training workshop for local educators and Boys and Girls Club leaders from the Greater Richmond area.

Teachers can access NEED curriculum online. As resources are available, teacher workshops and hands-on kits are available. Individual state curriculum correlations are available here.

NATIONAL ELEMENTARY SCHOOL OF THE YEAR

Thaxton Elementary School

Thaxton, VA

Project Title: We Can Save The World-Recycle!

Project Adviser: Viola Henry

This year in our club, our main goal was to help our school and community to recycle and to increase their awareness of various conservation ideas, while allowing our students to give back to their community.

Our projects included recycling ink cartridges and cell phones with Cartridges for Kids, recycling aluminum cans, and recycling mixed paper with the City of Bedford Solid Waste Department. This money was used to pay for supplies to do our school and community projects.

In the Ronald McDonald House Can Tab Program, we collected and donated cans tabs, so that the money raised would provide a home-away-from-home for families of people in the Roanoke area hospitals. In “Recycle the warmth”, gently used coats were collected, cleaned, and donated to needy families. All of our students participated in various conservation projects dealing with solar energy, hydrogen fuel cell cars, coal energy, ultraviolet light, energy games, wind energy, or transformation of energy.

This was our 11th year participating in the Virginia Tech/Association of Energy Conservation Professionals Energy Expo (two day demonstration of energy conservation projects and ideas). We had an Energy Fair at our school and Dominion Chrysler Dodge Jeep brought a “Gem car” to exhibit. The students were surprised to see that the car could be charged by plugging the car’s extension cord into a regular electrical outlet. We also participated in the “fall and spring clean-up campaign” with the Keep Bedford Beautiful Commission.