What is electricity? What does it have to do with Earth Hour?

In preparation for Earth Hour, we decided to ask the students what their thoughts were about electricity, and what it had to do with helping the earth? 

As a school, we were going to turn off the lights for a one hour period, therefore we wanted to make this event, relevant and meaningful to the students.

The following is the transcription of a twenty minute video discussion the students had about electricity and helping the earth.

"What are your thoughts on electricity?" Mrs. Ralph

"It's electricity that makes all the lights turn on and off.  And when you turn the lights off, it saves power so that if we keep the lights on all the time, then we'll run out of electricity. Then we won't have lights or t.v. anymore. And because if we keep the lights off, it doesn't make so much power for the electricity station." A.P.

"Each electricity station has five or six wires attached to it, so it connects to five or six houses, and when they turn their machine on, it sends power through the wires to the houses." D.S.

"I usually see wires in my house downstairs, when E.H. comes to my house, we see the wires at the back of the t.v. and then we turn on the t.v. with those wires behind it." G.B.

"The wires are there to make the t.v. run." E.H.

"What do you think is in the wires?" Mrs. Ralph

"Electricity!" E.H.

"What do you think electricity is?" Mrs. Ralph

"Electricity is a type of electrical that goes through the pipes that are behind my t.v." D.C.

"Electricity goes through a cord to the school and it goes under the road and it goes to many stations and the houses." G.M.

"Can you see electricity?" Mrs. Ralph

"No!" All

"They're inside the wires, and they don't let you see them so you don't get a shock." G.B.

"Electricity comes from an electricity station and then it comes through the wires, and then it goes through the wires to the t.v., then the t.v. comes on and works." M.P.

"Where do you think electricity comes from?" Mrs. Ralph

"I think they (power station) make electricity. I think they face two light bulbs together then a big electricity comes from one end and then the lights come together and you get electricity and they put it in a wire." A.P.

"What does all this electricity talk have to do with earth hour?" Mrs. Ralph

"Maybe if you turn off the lights it will make more electricity so you can see." K.W.

"If we turn off the light, we get more light." G.B.

"If we leave the lights on for a lot of time, it turns off and then you have no electricity." W.E.

"Why do we leave the lights on for the whole day? And W.E. said if you leave it on for a long time it goes out, but it doesn't go out for us? So why is it not going out?" E.H.

"But at lunch time we usually turn off the lights." G.B.

"What do you think we can do?" Mrs. Ralph

"Turn off the lights if we're all in music." A.M.

"If we leave the lights off all day, then it won't go off at night." E.H.

"We need to turn off the lights when we're not here so we save power and we don't waste everything." A.M.

What a wonderful student driven discussion on making meaning about electricity and it's connection to Earth Hour. My hope was that students gained a bit more knowledge about conserving and being aware of their actions. I certainly was blown away by their reasoning on such a complex topic.

The official Earth Hour took place the following day. Many families expressed how excited their child was to take part. Below are a few pictures depicting how Earth Hour was spent by some of our families including myself. Enjoy!