Sustainable Schools – An IDL STEM design challenge

The south facing Earthship is built into the side of a hill to take advantage of the thermal properties of the ground - slow to warm up; slow to cool down.

We’re delighted that our OER “Sustainable Schools – An IDL STEM design challenge” has been chosen this month to feature in TES Resources hand-picked collection of Popular Stem projects for secondary, a selection of cross-curricular investigations and activities to inspire pupils to work together and think creatively.

This free, customisable, interdisciplinary learning resource is based on a storyline – “Our Sustainable School”, which involves a letter being sent to the class asking for their help in designing a sustainable school.  The resource comprises five sessions focused on auditing your school’s current sustainable features and learning about fair trading using:

  1. A maths building game.
  2. Designing a school t-shirt.
  3. Making a sustainable school t-shirt (fast fashion).
  4. Building a windmill with easy materials.
  5. Applying the fair test principle in which scenario the windmill works better.

Children will learn about sustainability and the different ways they can be sustainable. Progress is monitored through weekly learning logs.

The resource includes:

  • A teacher block overview for the five sessions; auditing your school’s sustainability, fair trade building, sustainable school clothing, building wind turbines, fair test on a wind turbine.
    • Learner log-book.
    • Teacher guide for each session with associated materials (worksheet, ppt slides, linked resources).
    • Learner ‘hook’ letters.

This resource was designed for Scottish Curriculum for Excellence Second Level. It was developed by primary teacher Nicole Campbell, and adapted by Kay Douglas and Charlie Farley.  Sustainable Schools – An IDL STEM design challenge is licensed CC BY-SA, University of Edinburgh.

Header image: Brighton Earthship Roof View (Flickr) by Dominic Alves licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0