Read this information for tips on maximizing Energy Classroom materials in your classroom to meet third- to fifth- grade science learning standards and make your students smart energy consumers.

Goals for this Site

Site Organization

Information Scope

Topic Diagram

Classroom Suggestions

Science Standards

Answer Key

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Goals for this Site

Our intention in creating this site is to put a variety of resources for learning about energy at your fingertips. We want to provide you with easy-to-use, effective materials that meet your state's teaching standards, accommodate different learning styles, and deliver accurate and exciting content for your students.

Before designing the site, we surveyed teachers, and we consulted with teacher advisors throughout development. What we learned helped shape the resources you'll find in Energy Classroom.

Because teachers told us that energy is most often taught in grades 3 through 5, the material is aimed at those levels; because technology resources vary from one school to another, our materials are designed to help you teach core energy concepts in many different ways: through printed information sheets and quizzes, hands-on experiments, classroom activities, videos and interactive games and puzzles.

To encourage a spirit of scientific inquiry, questions are used throughout the materials.

Energy is something most students take for granted. We at Xcel Energy want to support you as you help them become informed energy consumers who will make the kind of wise choices that will assure a bright energy future for all of us. 

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Site Organization

Energy Classroom has five main sections:

• Power Sources — where energy comes from and how electricity is created and delivered.
• Virtual Power Plant Tour — is an interactive, behind-the-scenes look that takes students inside the walls and even some of the huge equipment at a coal plant.
• Conservation — why it's important to conserve, with tips students and their families can use.
• Clean Energy Planet — explores questions and ideas about clean energy, and some of the things we are doing to produce cleaner and more efficient energy for the future.
• Power & Wildlife — looks at Xcel Energy’s efforts to protect wildlife and habitat – and offers a closer look at several bird species who build nests near power plants and who can be seen in spring on our Bird Cam.
• Careers in Energy — offers students a look at the many interesting jobs available at utility companies and encourages them to study now to prepare for the ones that interest them.
• For Teachers — information to help you use these materials more effectively.

Within each section you will find materials organized by type:

• information sheets
• worksheets & quizzes
• activities experiments
• videos
• interactions 

Power Questions are some of the questions we get from students researching papers. These are topics not covered elsewhere in Energy Classroom.

Power Words is an online glossary for terms used throughout Energy Classroom. 

These resources are designed for your use in the classroom, but can also be accessed through the Xcel Energy Web site by students or others outside of class.

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Information Scope

The content of Energy Classroom is focused on topics identified by teachers in the survey we conducted before designing this site.

Power Sources describes the supply side of the energy equation, specifically:

• the many sources of energy,
• the advantages and disadvantages of each, and
• how electricity is produced and distributed.

Virtual Power Plant Tour is actually two tours. The first tracks the generation process from the arrival of coal by train to the electricity being sent out through the transmission and distribution system. The second is a detailed look at the various technologies used at power plants to reduce air emissions and conserve water. Both tours take the concepts taught in the Power Sources unit and show how they work in an actual coal plant.

Conservation talks about the demand side, with heavy emphasis on teaching practical steps students and their families can take to help conserve energy, save money and protect the environment.

Clean Energy Planet encourages students to think creatively about new energy solutions for the future by showing them some of the things Xcel Energy and others are working on now. Topics include improving technology at existing power plants, making renewable energy more affordable and reliable, green building design and Earth Day.

Power & Wildlife may surprise students with all the ways a power company can protect wildlife and habitat. They can learn more about some of the birds Xcel Energy features in its Bird Cams: peregrine falcons, Great Horned owls, osprey and eagles.

Careers In Energy offers students a look at the many interesting jobs available at utility companies and encourages them to study now to prepare for the ones that interest them.

Some of the content in this site is based on materials produced by EDS (Education Development Specialists) and is used with their permission. Credit is given on appropriate pages.

The EDS curriculum (known to some of you as Energy Explorers and Power People) also included some material that we have eliminated, most notably information about the energy consumed and air pollution created by motorized vehicles. While transportation is undoubtedly part of the overall energy picture, we at Xcel Energy felt it best to concentrate our materials on our own industry and the issues we know best.

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Topic Diagram

This diagram summarizes the relationships between the topics within Energy Classroom.

Energy Classroom is intended for children across grades 3, 4 and 5.

Power Sources and Conservation provide basic concepts on the demand and supply sides of energy. If you only have time for two units, use these two.

The Virtual Power Plant Tour applies the concepts in Power Sources and Conservation to actual power plants. There are two tours. One shows the steps of power generation. The other tour shows how power plants apply conservation and clean energy ideas.

Clean Energy Planet explores energy and the environment. It is intended for students who have covered Conservation, Power Sources and the Power Plant Tour. It presents questions for a discussion about the future of energy.

Careers in Energy will have more relevance for children who’ve taken the Power Plant Tour, but will be understandable to those who have not.

Power and Wildlife can be appreciated by children across all 3 grade levels. It also overlaps the ideas presented in Conservation and the environmental ideas presented in Clean Energy Planet.

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Classroom Suggestions

The teachers we surveyed said they weren't really looking for a set energy curriculum. Rather, they wanted a menu of materials to choose from according to their needs and the needs of their students. So that's how we designed our materials.  Here's a quick look at what's what:

Information Sheets present core concepts. These can be read together and discussed in class, and used independently for student review.

Worksheets and Quizzes are designed to reinforce and measure learning on that material. They can be used as homework, in-class exercises or tests. You can find answer keys for the worksheets  here in this Teachers section.

You will find overlap in the worksheets, so you can address specific needs. The same basic material is presented at different levels or for different learning styles — a graphic multiple choice for visual learners, for example. You will find that some worksheets are designed to challenge more advanced students with critical thinking exercises. 

We also have included two worksheets to appeal to students' creative imagination. Draw Your Own Power Source and Draw Your Own Conservation Solution require students to demonstrate a basic understanding of core content and then apply it in more imaginative ways. These can be used as is, on a normal-sized sheet of paper, or cut out and pasted on a much larger sheet to give students more space to create.

Activities provide supplementary ways to help students assimilate and apply core concepts to the world around them.

Experiments help students practice scientific inquiry.  Again, you will find some overlapping options, so you can choose those experiments that will work best in your classroom for your students.  The Power Words included on the page are designed to increase students' vocabularies.  If desired, you can blank out the definitions when you reproduce the sheet and require students to look up the definitions for themselves in the Power Words glossary.

Videos help communicate visual concepts more effectively; for example, what coal looks like, or how nuclear fission works. Students can view videos individually on the computer, or as a class if you are able to project images from the computer on a large screen.

The Ask Our Employees video provides an opportunity for students to click on questions they might ask in an informational interview, and hear the answers from eight Xcel Energy employees who hold different positions throughout the company. This interactive experience can take place wherever students have access to the Internet: in the classroom, in a media center or at home . The worksheet titled Energy Job Quiz is designed to test what students have learned by listening to these employee interviews.

Interactions include interactive puzzles and games to explore energy concepts. Power Puzzles reinforce how electricity is produced, from power plant to you. Watts Up is a question and answer game that is a fun way for students to practice what they have learned about conservation.

The entire Virtual Power Plant Tour is designed as an interactive experience. Be sure to encourage your students to click on the photo buttons after they watch the video in each section. These photos show them even more detail than they would be able to see in a real power plant tour.

Clean Energy Planet uses a series of interactive questions to encourage students to explore new ideas for making cleaner energy for the future. The examples featured here can help to give students context for energy stories they find in newspapers and magazines, and on TV and the Internet.

Power and Wildlife tells animal stories that will be popular anytime, but are especially exciting to students when used during the spring months when our many live Bird Cams are showing action in the nests of some of the birds.

Adobe Flash has been used to develop the videos and interactions. You will need to download the free Flash Plug-In to see these materials.

Adobe Acrobat has been used to create the other pdf documents — Information Sheets, Worksheets, Activities and Experiments. For more information and tips on using Flash and Acrobat, see the links at left.

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Science Standards

See how these resources relate to science standards in your state, and others served by Xcel Energy. Use this link to view the science standards (1.2MB pdf).

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Answer Key

This document includes answers and calculations for worksheets, experiments and activities, and supporting information for some information sheets and activities. It has bookmarks so you can jump to the specific resource you want to see. Use this link to view the answer key (2.2MB pdf).

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