Llangattock Green Valleys-powering homes

These are materials to support classrooms at upper primary or lower secondary, thinking about electrical power supplies, demnds, and geeration, costs in the home and community.

The context is imagined to be the local community: the genesis is a village with a primary school, an Energy Local scheme, and local businesses using a mix of local power supply strategies.

The resources could be used in preparation for, or follow up from, a site visit, such as to a substantial solar array, a wind turbine or a micro-hydro scheme.

There are four facets to the resource:

The teaching episodes are concise guides, expanded on in the Explorations of teaching episodes. The The physics of supply, demand and cost is a secure line of thinking for teachers, and the Electrical power tripwires draws on educational research and teaching experience to expound some of the teaching and learning challenges.

Seven teaching episodes

• High power, and not so high power
• How to save or spend
• Adding up how much you demand
• A day at home
• Making and keeping changes
• Demand for a whole day
• Helping ourselves and helping others

The physics of supply, demand and cost

• Powering and paying
• Meet the characters
• Collaborating quantities
• Power is happening
• Making and keeping differences
• A pattern of use

Explorations of teaching episodes

• 👣 Learning journeys for "High power, and not so high power"
• Starting exploring "High power, and not so high power"
• Digging deeper into "High power, and not so high power"
• An in-depth study of "High power, and not so high power"
• 👣 Learning journeys for "How to save or spend"
• Starting exploring "How to save or spend"
• Digging deeper into "How to save or spend"
• An in-depth study of "How to save or spend"
• 👣 Learning journeys for "Adding up how much you demand"
• Starting exploring "Adding up how much you demand"
• Digging deeper into "Adding up how much you demand"
• An in-depth study of "Adding up how much you demand"
• 👣 Learning journeys for "A day at home"
• Starting exploring "A day at home"
• Digging deeper into "A day at home"
• An in-depth study of "A day at home"
• 👣 Learning journeys for "Making and keeping changes"
• Starting exploring "Making and keeping changes"
• Digging deeper into "Making and keeping changes"
• An in-depth study of "Making and keeping changes"
• 👣 Learning journeys for "Demand for a whole day"
• Starting exploring "Demand for a whole day"
• Digging deeper into "Demand for a whole day"
• An in-depth study of "Demand for a whole day"
• 👣 Learning journeys for "Helping ourselves and helping others"
• Starting exploring "Helping ourselves and helping others"
• Digging deeper into "Helping ourselves and helping others"
• An in-depth study of "Helping ourselves and helping others"

Electrical power tripwires

• Avoiding "Just this"
• Not grounding accounts in essentials — "how much" or "how long"
• Using lonely numbers
• Conflating physical quantities with numbers
• Thinking with compound quantities
• Respecting energy as a calculated quantity
• Predicting with uncertainty

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