Spend time discussing with the children some of the important issues about energy usage at school and home and the importance of preventing wasteful uses of energy. Get the class to identify ways that global energy needs might be met in the future such as investigating the uses of solar farms and wind turbines and explore how a fusion reactor might be used.

Energy Problems
Spend some time discussing with the class some of the energy problems that are faced by countries around the world. Get the children to list some of the different forms of energy currently used in the UK such as fossil fuels, renewables and nuclear. Discuss with the class how their lives might change if they did not have the energy needed to completed tasks such as cooking or lighting. Get the children to suggest alternative ways of overcoming a lack of energy such as cooking on a open fire or using candles for light. Ask them to suggest how they could persuade others to conserve energy so that it is not wasted.

Energy Survey
The class can spend some time conducting a survey around the school looking for examples of where energy is being wasted such as lights left on in classrooms or doors to the playground left open letting the heating escape into the cold air. The children can make some tally charts to record evidence of wasteful examples of energy that they can find around the school. Back in the classroom, get the children to convert their tally charts into graphs. They can write sentences to identify the meaning behind the data presented on their graphs. Work with the whole class to discuss the results of their surveys and think about how they can encourage other pupils in the school to conserve energy.

School Instructions
Work with the class to identify the correct ways of structuring and formatting a set of instructions to inform other pupils in the school how to conserve energy. Get the children to make a list of imperative verbs to use at the start of each instruction. Pairs of children in the class can also write some example instructions that contain extra and superfluous vocabulary for other children to edit and rewrite to make them easier and clearer to understand. Work as a class to identify locations around the school where they can display some of their suggested instructions on posters.

Posters Presentation
Next get the each of the children to produce a poster containing an instruction about how to conserve energy usage to display in a location around the school. Spend some time discussing with the class techniques that they can use to make their posters eye-catching so that someone will follow their commands about how to save energy in the school. The children can use a word processing document to create their posters by combining text and graphics. You can make some model posters that some children can use as the basis for their own work. Get the class to print their completed posters which can then be displayed in different locations around the school.