Put Energy Awareness Month into action with hands-on lessons that help students investigate energy use, evaluate efficiency, and identify practical ways to conserve energy at school and at home.

• School Energy Inspectors (Grades 3–5): Students use their classroom as a laboratory while learning the fundamentals of energy use, efficiency, and conservation. The unit builds toward a guided classroom energy audit and encourages students to promote energy-saving behaviors throughout their school.
• School Energy Experts (Grades 6–8): Students investigate energy consumption and its economic and environmental impacts by measuring heating and cooling, electricity use, and lighting in their school. The lessons culminate in a building-wide energy audit and recommendations for improving efficiency.
• Building Science (Grades 6–8): Explore how buildings function as systems and how their design affects comfort and energy efficiency. Hands-on activities examine insulation, conduction, heat transfer, airflow, humidity, windows, and other building performance measures.
• School Energy Managers (Grades 9–12): Students take on the role of energy managers as they monitor school energy consumption and explore thermal energy, insulation, ventilation, electricity, and lighting. They use their findings to develop energy management and conservation plans for their school.
• Managing Home Energy Use (Grades 3–12): This at-home supplement expands upon NEED’s School Energy curriculum using the home as a learning laboratory. Through a six-lesson sequence, students conduct a step-by-step home energy audit, identify opportunities to save energy and money, and share what they learn with their households.
• Energy House: In this hands-on design challenge, students build and insulate a model house using different materials, then test its energy efficiency. The activity introduces insulation, conservation, heat transfer, and diminishing returns while strengthening planning, measuring, and problem-solving skills.
• Energy Expos: Students work in groups to research an energy topic, develop a visual exhibit, and teach others through a presentation. The guide includes research questions and presentation resources covering energy sources, electricity, transportation, energy storage, efficiency, careers, and other energy topics.
• Plug Loads: Students investigate how appliances, electronics, and other plug-in devices use electricity at school. They collect data, calculate energy use and associated costs, explore phantom or “vampire” power, and recommend ways to reduce consumption.
• Energy Conservation Contract: Turn energy awareness into action by inviting students and their families to commit to specific conservation measures. Students calculate the resulting energy savings and later evaluate how successfully their households maintained those changes.