Jack Hulland Elementary: The Energy Trail

Teacher: Ali Donnelly
Grade: 6

Jack Hulland Elementary is a school situated in Porter Creek in Whitehorse, YT. There are 270 students in our school. I am the lucky teacher of 23 amazing students in grade 6. We lead busy school lives, when we are in the classroom we are exploring, inventing and analyzing. Out of the classroom we ski, hike, bike, snowshoe or run into the vast green belts that surround our school community. We are tangibly exploring how our community is being affected by climate change by noticing the early spring, the extreme changes in temperature from one week to the next and cramming in as much snowboarding at Mt. Sima before the snow melts and gets mushy.

As a class, we have discussed how Climate Change affects us here in the Yukon. We are concerned about the amount of greenhouse gases that are being emitted into the air (and into the atmosphere) and, as a result, we are worried about the warmer winters and what that will mean for my students future. We are concerned about the amount of housing that is being built around our school and worry about the lack of habitat for our animals and the lack of trees in our community. The students are asking questions such as: "Is there anything that we can do to REVERSE Climate Change", "What will happen if we run out of fossil fuels", and "One day will WE become fossil fuels?"

Together, we are exploring and answering these questions and learning a lot along the way.

Project details

We made posters that visually showed the steps from taking the fossil fuels out of the ground to purchasing an item at a store. The students did this project in pairs and we have made a climate change display on the board outside of our classroom. We are going to be adding to this as we learn more about Climate Change in the north during this unit.