Educational activities | Energy Sparks

Audience

This page provides help for all registered school users.

You will need to sign-in to follow the instructions on this page.

What are pupil activities?

Energy Sparks provides a wide range of pupil activities. These are freely available to anyone, although some require an Energy Sparks account to complete.

The pupil activities offered by Energy Sparks are designed to engage students in energy saving and climate action within their school community. There are a range of curriculum-linked activities for different age groups.

They can be used in lessons or by eco-teams, and come with lesson plans and downloadable resources.

There are four main categories of activities based on the skills they support:

Analyst - pupils analyse energy data from their school to identify patterns and areas for improvement. For example, our Analyse your school energy use - when is your school occupied? activity encourages pupils to examine electricity consumption during different times of the school day.

Detective - pupils investigate where energy is being used, and wasted, in their school. For example, our Carry out a spot check to see if lights or electrical items are left on after school activity encourages pupils to investigate what is happening in their school and encourage behaviour change.

Change maker - pupils implement the changes that will make a real difference to their school's energy consumption and carbon footprint. For example, our Label lights and appliances to show which should be left on or turned off activity encourages pupils to work with staff to identify what can be switched off, and gives pupils the agency to act on energy consumption.

Communicator - one of the most effective ways to take climate action is to talk about what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. Pupils share their energy saving messages with staff, students, the school community and wider world through activities such as Pupils meet with the headteacher and school governors to create an energy policy.

Schools that are signed up with Energy Sparks can also record their activities to receive points for our annual scoreboard (find out how to do this below).

Alongside our pupil activities, we also have energy saving actions for staff as well as short programmes of related activities that school communities can work through together to achieve greater impact. Schools completing whole programmes receive bonus points toward our scoreboard.

How to use activities in the classroom

Each individual activity page comes with the guidance, resources and lesson plans required to run activities through clubs or in class. These have been written by teachers, for teachers.

Our Explorer activities are designed to be whole-class activities and explore the facts and issues around climate change and energy.

How to use activities with your eco-team or club

We highly recommend that schools form a dedicated group of pupils (sometimes supported by a staff member, such as the school’s sustainability lead or facilities manager) to spearhead energy efficiency efforts. This team could be a new initiative, or it could build on an existing eco-committee.

Energy Sparks offers guidance on setting up and running these teams, including appointing pupil energy monitors and organising regular assemblies about saving energy.

School leaders may ask the eco-team to focus on particular activities based on Energy Sparks recommendations or on your school’s energy saving targets. Alternatively, you may wish to give pupils the chance to develop their leadership skills by choosing what to focus on.

How to find relevant activities

There are a number of ways to identify the best activities to use with your pupils; you could:

Follow our recommendations.
Base your choices on our energy saving advice.
Complete the next steps in a programme.
Use suggestions from a recent energy audit.
Use one of our activity themes.
Use our search functionality.

Each of these is discussed in the following sections.

We suggest focusing on our recommendations, as these will guide you towards the most impactful activities that will help to reduce your energy use. But the other options provide more choice if you're looking to focus on a specific topic or skill.

Following our recommendations

Energy Sparks automatically recommends relevant activities based on your energy analysis, your enrolled programmes, other activities that you have recently completed, as well as any specific suggestions from a recent energy audit.

We automatically rank these suggestions based on which will have the most impact on your energy use.

This page has your current activity recommendations. You can also access them:

From your school's Pupil dashboard - click on Choose Activity under your scoreboard update.
When signed in, from the My School menu - choose Recommended activities.
After recording an activity, we offer suggestions for what to do next.

Based on your energy saving advice

Energy Sparks has advice pages covering different energy saving topics, such as heating control and electricity baseload. All of the advice pages include a recommended set of activities and actions at the bottom of each page.

The pupil activities are all relevant to that topic area and are automatically prioritised based on which will have the most impact on your energy use.

To explore activities by energy saving topic, you can:

Browse through the advice pages for your school and look at the suggestions.
Review your prioritised energy saving opportunities and see the recommended activities for each opportunity.

Based on your enrolled programmes

You could also consider running through a programme of activities. Each programme relates to a specific topic such as Watch Out for Heating Waste!

You can view our full list of programmes here.
If your school is already enrolled in a programme, you will see a prompt to complete the next step on your school dashboard.
When signed in, you can review your progress and next steps from individual programme pages.

Based on suggestions from a recent audit

If you have recently benefited from one of our energy audits then we will have provided you with a set of suggested activities and actions that will help you reduce your energy use.

This list of recommendations will also be available to view from your school dashboard.

Based on one of our themes

If you are looking to develop certain key skills, then you can browse through our five main categories: analyst, change-maker, communicator, detective, and explorer.

These are summarised in the above section.

Using our search functionality

If you have a more specific idea about what you would like to focus on, you can also use our activity search function. Type in keywords to search across our activity descriptions.

You can choose to limit your results to a particular key stage or subject by clicking on the buttons underneath the search bar.

How to record activities

After selecting an activity you’ll be taken to a page where you can find all the guidance and resources you might need to complete it.

Follow the link on the page to Record this activity (you will need to be signed in).

Note: if you are an admin for more than one school, you will need to select the relevant school from the drop-down list first.

You will then be asked to provide additional details about when you completed the activity and a description of how you carried out the activity. Adding photos or documents helps build a more complete picture of what you have done, and will score you extra points.

We often use this information to showcase the amazing work you are doing, in order to inspire other schools. The information you provide will also be useful evidence during Energy Sparks competitions.

Why should you record your activities?

Recording the activities completed by pupils at your school is useful for a number of reasons:

If you have a funded place, recording activities is vital as it allows you to demonstrate that you are meeting our engagement expectations.
It allows you to build a record of your energy saving activities. This can be useful when applying for Eco-Schools awards or for capital funding for energy efficiency measures, as well as when completing SECR reports. It is also useful for sharing with the wider school community.
Every time a school logs an activity they acquire points for our scoreboard, which fosters a healthy sense of competition between schools and counts towards end-of-year prizes. Read more about our scoreboards and competitions.
Activities will be displayed on your energy charts. This allows you to track the impact of your activities.
It is useful for Energy Sparks to see what energy efficiency activities are being carried out at schools so that we can assess which lead to the biggest savings. We can then share that information with other schools for inspiration.