PPL Electric Utilities and NTC invite you to use these e-learning resources to teach your students about the importance of electrical safety. The digital materials below are designed to get your students excited about understanding this important subject.
Want to know the best way to use the related videos, games, e-books and other lessons to educate your class? Watch this short video and learn how to add Captain Wattage to your curriculum!
We know your class time is extremely valuable. That’s why we ensure that all of our digital e-learning materials are aligned with state and national educational standards. It’s important that the Captain Wattage digital program adds to your existing curriculum and keeps students on track with their ongoing learning.
See below for details about how each digital activity aligns with educational standards and corresponds with your state’s curricula.
This 35-minute show presents a virtual lesson in energy efficiency for grades K-5. Through an interactive web platform, a live host will introduce entertaining sketches featuring a variety of characters in professionally filmed scenes from educational theatrical productions.
The sketches focus on the following educational points:
Whether watching in the classroom or at home, your students will experience important lessons about electricity and electrical safety.
Your students can enhance what they learn from the program with these fun, hands-on lessons and experiments. These lessons can be done in the classroom or easily adapted for students to do at home with their families.
They’re a fun and educational way for students to learn with family members. The materials needed for these lessons are basic supplies that most people have at home. Follow up with your students to make sure they enjoyed and learned from these activities.
Lesson 1:
Objective
Students will use the engineering process to build a solar oven out of a pizza box.
Purpose of Activity
Read or Listen, Identify Details, Apply Skills
21st Century Skills
Critical Thinking, Collaboration
Cognitive Level
Strategic Thinking, Extended Thinking, Skills and Concepts
Class Time
1 hour
Materials
Procedure
Critical Thinking Questions
How can we use solar power to generate electricity?
What role did the insulation play in this oven?
Adapted from: https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2015/03/f20/PizzaBoxSolarOven.pdf
Lesson 2:
Objective
Students will use the engineering process to develop an insulated container to minimize the loss of heat energy.
Purpose of Activity
Read or Listen, Identify Details, Apply Skills
21st Century Skills
Critical Thinking, Collaboration
Cognitive Level
Strategic Thinking, Extended Thinking, Skills and Concepts
Class Time
2 hours
Materials
Procedure
Critical Thinking Questions
Which insulation worked best to insulate the water?
What role did heat transfer play in the design of the insulation?
Adapted from: https://energy.utah.gov/energy-education/curriculum/
Follow-up, formative assessments for you to gauge the learning of your students are especially important with e-learning. Below are some suggestions for how you can assess your students’ performance quickly and effectively.
These assessments are easy for you and your students to complete and help ensure your class is getting the maximum educational value, retention and engagement from the related digital activities.
| Elementary Educational Assessments | Livestream | Hands-on lessons | Digital games | E-book | Graphic novel | Interactive activities | PDFs & Print materials |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ask students to reflect on the topic and draw their thoughts on paper | X | X | X | ||||
| Write one or two sentences identifying the main point | X | X | X | X | |||
| Think-pair-share | X | X | X | ||||
| One-question quiz | X | X | |||||
| Journal reflection | X | X | X | ||||
| Have students discuss three things they learned, two things they still want to learn, and one question they still have | X | X | X | ||||
| Hand in completed activity | X | X | |||||
| Submit screenshot of completed activity | X | X |
The Captain Wattage student activities page features games, videos, educational lessons, downloadable PDFs, a smart speaker app and more. Access in the classroom or at home to learn more about electrical safety and have fun exploring Captain Wattage!
This downloadable PDF features colorful artwork, entertaining games and activities, and expanded information to complete your understanding of electrical safety. Read on your own, with your class or with friends and family and get to know the characters of Captain Wattage.
Dive into this colorful, illustrated e-book in the classroom or at home with friends and family. Students can read to themselves or with others, and younger students can use the read-along option.
Flip through this colorful graphic novel for a new and engaging story. With fun artwork, entertaining characters and expanded information, the Agents of Safety graphic novel offers a page-turning experience.
We take your feedback and suggestions very seriously. Hearing from educators with firsthand experience with our programs ensures that we continue to improve our digital resources, making them as beneficial as possible for you and your students.
Please complete this brief, two-minute evaluation to let us know what you thought. Enter the code you received on the Teacher Instruction Card or call us for your access code.
Thank you for your time and valuable input.
You’ve covered the basics of electrical safety. If you really want to dig deep with your class, check out the expanded information and additional resources below.
These materials provide even more insight into the history, science, usage and importance of electricity. There are also helpful links and tips for staying safe around electricity in your community.
Expanded Information 1:
Read the passage to your students, have them play the Build a Power Plant game, and ask them the critical thinking questions that follow.
We use electricity every day to power our TVs, computers, video games, lamps and about a million other things. But where does electricity come from, and how does it get into those funny looking holes in the wall?
Let’s go backwards. The outlets in your wall are connected to a series of wires that lead to utility poles outside of your house or apartment building. These wires then lead to transformers or substations, which, in turn, lead to a power plant. It’s in the power plant that the electricity is created.
In the 1800s, scientists discovered that when a magnet is dragged across a series of copper wires, it creates a field of electricity. The problem is, in order to keep your lightbulb lit, there has to be a constant current of electricity flowing through it, which means the magnet has to be continually moving. To solve this problem, the magnets in the power plant are surrounded by wires on all sides. So if the magnets spin in a circle, they create a nonstop current.
But how do we keep that magnet spinning? One way is to attach it to a turbine. A turbine is like a giant fan. Imagine a child’s pinwheel. If the magnet were attached to that pinwheel, then it would spin any time the child blew on it. In the power plant, the pinwheel-like turbine isn’t spun by a child with amazing lung capacity, but instead with steam. By focusing steam through smaller and smaller pipes, it becomes so powerful it can spin the turbine with great ease.
All that steam comes from boiling large amounts of water. The more water we boil, the more steam we produce, which takes us to resources. All of that water has to boil somehow, and we make that happen by burning resources like coal, oil and natural gas. The more electricity we make, the more resources it takes to make it. And because there’s only so much coal, oil and natural gas in the world, it’s more important than ever that we conserve, or save, electricity wherever possible.
Use the objects below to build a power plant. Click on the play button to start.
What is another way we can spin the turbine?
What happens when we run out of resources like coal or natural gas?
Expanded Information 2:
A car engine burns gasoline, converting the chemical energy in gasoline into mechanical energy. Solar photovoltaic cells change radiant energy from the sun into electrical energy. Energy changes form, but the total amount of energy in the universe stays the same.
Energy efficiency is the amount of useful energy obtained from a system. A perfectly energy-efficient machine would convert all of the energy put into the machine to useful work. In reality, converting one form of energy into another form of energy always involves a conversion into usable and unusable forms of energy.
Most energy transformations are not efficient. The human body is a good example. The human body is like a machine, and the fuel it requires is food. Food gives a person energy to move, breathe and think. However, the human body isn't very efficient at converting food into useful work. The human body is less than 5% efficient most of the time. The rest of the energy is converted to heat, which may or may not be useful, depending on how cool or warm a person wants to be.
Source: https://www.eia.gov/kids/what-is-energy/laws-of-energy.php
Expanded Information 3:
