Do a creative activity themed around energy saving

Hollinswood Primary School and Nursery, Monday, 11 March 2024
10 Communicator KS1, KS2, KS3

What you did

Eco Committee ran a competition for Year 4 to create energy saving posters that focussed on two things.  

The first was  "opening the blinds", to let in more natural light, and to help with over-lighting.  This also included the tagline "Let the sunlight in and pay less electric bills".

The second was "turning off the lights" with a bright, clear message.  Both of these posters were then used around school, also in assembly, and were in the messages and photos taken with our school class energy monitors.

Copies of the posters are attached.  


Activity description

Here are some ideas of creative activities themed around energy saving which you could use to promote the energy saving message:

  1. As you complete some of the other Energy Sparks activities, record  your activities with photos. Use the  photos to create a school display promoting energy saving measures. This will help to remind pupils and teachers of simple energy saving steps they should continue to do at home and at school. 
  2. As you complete some of the Energy Sparks activities, think about how you could persuade others to adopt the same energy saving measures. Can you design signs that get across your message clearly, catch pupils and teachers attention and remind  them to save energy? Too many signs or posters close together can reduce their effectiveness as people start to ignore them, so choose carefully the messages you want to put across and where to mount your signs and posters.
  3. Write a newspaper or magazine article about saving energy or an energy related issue such as global warming. Remember to use headings, bullet points, underlining etc to guide the reader. You could choose to illustrate your article with diagrams and pictures. You could also choose to present some of the data you have collected at your own school, through your monitoring campaigns, for example recording whether classroom lights are turned off at lunchtime, or whether doors and windows are closed when the heating is on. Draw your own charts to present the data, and then use the article to tell your audience about what your results mean, and what the school could do  next to reduce its energy use.
  4. Write a fictional story to convince your audience to save energy. You could write a science fiction story set in the  future with global warming. Research some of the expected consequences of global warming, and describe a world where some of those consequences are a reality. Make your world of the  future feel real. Invite your readers to see, hear, feel, smell and even taste what our planet under global warming might be like. 
  5. Write a poem to convey the energy saving message
  6. Create a promotional video to get pupils and staff to save energy. Show the best videos in assembly to get  the whole school involved, even the youngest children. 
  7. How about running a whole school lights switch off competition whereby each class is allocated their own classroom and another area of responsibility in the  school (eg toilets, corridors, halls, offices etc)? Allocate each class 200 points at the start of the competition. Monitor lights daily and if lights in their particular zone or classroom are left on then points are deducted from their score. The class with the most points at the end of a two week period is the winner of the competition. To get people excited about taking part, and to outline the rules, create a short video and present it in an assembly. 
  8. Write an energy saving song or rap. Here is an example of an energy saving rap from Pentrehafod School.

Earn more Energy Sparks points for each different type of creative activity you carry out and record.

All activities