Whether you’re turning on lights, charging a phone, watching TV or cooking dinner, your home needs a lot of energy, such as electricity or gas. This resources pack includes an article from The Week Junior magazine, along with a sheet of activities designed to get children thinking, talking and writing about what the story means to them.
Oracy
This energy crisis is going to make life difficult, but is it all bad? Isn’t it a timely reminder not to take our home comforts for granted? Doesn’t it show how wasteful we have been with our power over recent years? Or do you think that we have every right to be angry with our leaders? Given all the technological advances mankind has made, isn’t it a real failure of those in charge that people have to cut down on heating, lighting and cooking? What do you think?
Writing skills
Imagine there really was an energy-saving superhero. Write a short narrative extract in which a family is struggling to do something like switch off a light when, suddenly, the superhero flies in an saves the day.
OR
Write two Haikus based on this article. They could be about heat or light or draughts, for example, but make sure they follow the 3-line, 5-7-5 syllable format.
Investigate
Here in the UK, we get our energy from a number of different sources, such as the burning of fossil fuels. Find out what they all are and the percentage of our total usage that is supplied by each. Can you represent this breakdown in a graph or chart?
Find the entire series of Topical Tuesday resources to download in our Topical Tuesdays collection.
What is The Week Junior?
The Week Junior magazine looks at current affairs and helps children make sense of the world, provides context and clarity to complex issues, improves general knowledge and encourages discussion and debate.
To find out more about The Week Junior and to download its free resources, please go to The Week Junior website.