Learning Activity: Green Homes

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(CNN Student News) -- Students will learn about the key construction and design features that can make a house environmentally friendly and energy efficient.

Procedure

Group students and direct them to their local utility companies and online resources to learn about environmentally friendly home-building materials and what makes a home energy efficient. After groups share their findings in class discussion, challenge each group to design and create a model or drawing of a dream "green" house. Have groups present their creations and discuss the challenges that they faced in designing their homes.

Correlated Standards

Science Standards: Life Sciences

Standard 6: Understands relationships among organisms and their physical environment

Level III Grade: 6-8

Benchmark 5. Knows how matter is recycled within ecosystems (e.g., matter is transferred from one organism to another repeatedly, and between organisms and their physical environment; the total amount of matter remains constant, even though its form and location change)

Level IV Grade : 9-12

Benchmark 5. Knows ways in which humans can alter the equilibrium of ecosystems, causing potentially irreversible effects (e.g., human population growth, technology, and consumption; human destruction of habitats through direct harvesting, pollution, and atmospheric changes)

McREL: Content Knowledge: A Compendium of Standards and Benchmarks for K-12 Education (Copyright 2000 McREL) is published online by Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning (McREL) (http://www.mcrel.org/standards-benchmarks), 2550 S. Parker Road, Suite 500, Aurora, CO 80014.

Geography

Standard 14: Understands how human actions modify the physical environment

Level III Grade : 6-8

Benchmark 1. Understands the environmental consequences of people changing the physical environment (e.g., the effects of ozone depletion, climate change, deforestation, land degradation, soil salinization and acidification, ocean pollution, groundwater-quality decline, using natural wetlands for recreational and housing development)

Level IV Grade : 9-12

Benchmark 3. Understands the global impacts of human changes in the physical environment (e.g., increases in runoff and sediment, tropical soil degradation, habitat destruction, air pollution; alterations in the hydrologic cycle; increases in world temperatures; groundwater reduction)