Cool Green Schools

Factors that affect health and learning.

Can Students Improve Their Health, Learning, and School?

They already have.

Energy Savings

Where Did H2O Go?

Air Quality

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Students calculated LED lighting in halls to save $13,000

Students often found water or cups missing at water coolers.

Students monitored classrooms for Co2, TVOC’s, PM 2.5, Radon, Temperature and Humidity.

Seeing About Seeing

Why do students sleep?

Filter Out the Noise?

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Several students discovered they needed glasses during student-led eye chart exercise.

A student study found a very high correlation between dim rooms and the number of sleeping students.

Do loud air filtering units interfere with classroom learning?

Sleep= Smart?

Growing Air

Asthma Triggers

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Students studied whether the amount of sleep affected their performance on cognitive tests.

Students grew spider plants to improve air quality and connect students with nature.

Students identified asthma triggers and used integrated pest management to reduce pests at their school.

Ventilation

Dim Hallways

Exercise Your Stress

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Students discovered some rooms did not have working ventilation.

Students found low light levels in hallways.

Student found best results with moderate levels of exercise

Real science and innovation is empowered, engaging learning

We challenge our students is to study and improve one thing that affects their health and learning.

This changes everything

Now students are focused on studying and improving something that affects them directly. Working on their chosen projects in small groups, they are practicing scientific inquiry and problem solving together as a team of scientists. As each group presents their project and progress to the class, they are able to learn from each other and offer suggestions.

I am impressed with how the bored students in the back of the class will rise to this challenge, how excited they are to use their skills and innovation to change something. Working together in small teams, all students can add their own abilities and skills to the project.

Our students have been trained to perform experiments with set procedures and known outcomes, but real science and innovation is often messy and unclear.

This project engages students in real world science and innovation, which is dynamic and full of the confounding factors of interdependent systems. This is full of those Aha Moments.

With the focus on improving health and learning, students can benefit directly from their work.

The challenges that this project poses, the choices left to students, and the collaborative work are designed to empower students and build their skills for problem solving.