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Pre-Show
IGNITE STUDENT CURIOSITY
Enbridge Gas and NTC are thrilled to bring Once Upon a Flame to your school — a live, theatrical experience for students in grades K-5. Through the power of performance, two talented actors blend education and entertainment to guide students through an exploration of natural gas conservation and safety. We’ve put together this toolkit to help support you in maximizing this experience for your students. It contains classroom and at-home resources for use before and after the performance. Once Upon A Flame is aligned with state and national standards and covers the following topics:
- Natural gas is used to generate electricity, providing heat for homes and buildings, fuel for cooking and water heating systems and is a resource for industrial manufacturing.
- Students will learn how the history and geology of natural gas started millions of years ago but is still relevant today.
- Energy created by natural gas is wasted daily through personal habits, but can be conserved just as effectively by adjusting certain behaviors.
- By exploring how students can take natural gas safety into their own hands, they will have the ability to extend their knowledge to real-life situations.
Help Students Be Good Audience Members
Many students may not have experienced live theatre before, and learning to be a good audience member takes practice. We have prepared a video to assist your students in this learning. Share it with your class before the performance to get everyone ready for the show.
The actors will also open the show with a reminder about being good audience members to help reinforce these skills.
Activate Prior Knowledge
Get your students thinking about the topics covered in the performance through the Know, Wonder, Learned (KWL) chart linked here. This can be completed as a group or individually. Complete the Know and Wonder sections before the show, and the Learned section afterwards.
Get a ready-to-use KWL chart designed for whole class instruction—perfect for projecting, presenting, or printing for group use.
Grab a student-friendly KWL chart—ideal for independent work, small groups, or personal reflection.
Vocabulary Words and Definitions
Before the show, help your students get familiar with key vocabulary related to natural gas conservation and safety. You can integrate them into lesson plans or review them together as a class.
Vocabulary
Conserve – To use wisely; the opposite of waste
Energy – The ability to do work and the force that makes things change
Geology – The science that deals with the Earth’s physical structure
Natural Gas – A resource used in our homes for cooking and heating
Natural Resource – Something that is found in nature and useful to humans (coal, water and natural gas are examples)
Pipeline – A long tube, often underground, used to transport oil, natural gas or water over great distances
Mercaptan – The rotten egg smell that is added to natural gas so you can tell if there is a leak
Safety – Avoiding injury or danger
Waste – To use unwisely; the opposite of conserve
It's Showtime!
Now that your students’ curiosity has been ignited, enjoy and participate in the show!
POST-show
EXTEND STUDENT LEARNING
The show may be over, but the learning doesn’t have to stop. Use the resources below to help deepen your students’ understanding of natural gas conservation & safety.
And don’t forget to complete a program evaluation at HeyTeachers.org! It helps NTC continue creating great programs, and you will be entered in a drawing for a chance to win $250 for your classroom.
Summarize Key Concepts
Spark classroom conversation about natural gas conservation and safety, give students a chance to reflect on the performance and encourage critical thinking.
Using the Know, Wonder, Learned (KWL) chart, complete the final section: Learned. As a group or individually, students can summarize their key takeaways from the performance.
Lesson Plans
Continue to bring natural gas conservation and safety to life through the following arts-integrated and hands-on lesson plans.
This lesson integrates basic acting tools (body, voice, and imagination) for students to act out vocabulary words. By using movement to embody the meaning of each word, students are more likely to retain its meaning and concept. It is a fun way to differentiate instruction to help students learn and remember the meaning of words.
This format is particularly powerful because students have to use vocabulary words from two different angles — as the confused “asker” who doesn’t fully understand, and as the knowledgeable “expert” who does. That dual perspective requires a deeper grasp of word meaning than a one-directional task. It works well with any topic.
In this lesson, students will use cups of gelatin to understand how animals and plants become buried and turn into fossils and resources like natural gas, investigate rock layers to discover different types of fossils and analyze evidence to determine fossil and rock layer age.
In this lesson, students will use the Rocking the Rock Cycle Worksheet (included) to describe the three types of rocks and explain how each one forms, trace the path of rock material through the rock cycle and identify the qualities of each type of rock that make them useful as resources.
Encore
Engage Independent Learning
Keep the learning going with digital games, printable activities and take-home materials your students can explore on their own. Sending resources home helps reinforce the message beyond the classroom and keeps the conversation growing with families.
Games and Activites
Your students get their own toolkit too — packed with fun games and activities that reinforce what they learned. Share the link below with your class!
Printable Handouts
These activities and puzzles are designed for easy printing and work great in the classroom or at home.
Bring the Learning Home
Send these take-home resources with your students to spark conversations with their families and reinforce the message beyond the classroom.
Additional Resources
[Addtional links here]
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