Ogden Elementary’s “Go Green Team” receives national recognition

For the second consecutive year, Ogden Elementary School’s Go Green Team will been honored by the National Energy Education Department (NEED) Project. This year, the Go Green Team members, Advisor Mindy Nicoll and Co-Advisor Alethea Jenkins have been congratulated on an outstanding energy education project and awarded 2nd Place Elementary Level School of the Year in North Carolina. With this victory, the team will travel to Washington, DC, on June 25-28, 2010, to attend the NEED National Recognition Ceremonies and be presented with a plaque and certificates as tokens for their achievements. Students will have the opportunity to meet other school team winners from across the country and learn more about school-based conservation efforts.

Ogden’s Go Green Team is an after-school program consisting of 3rd through 5th grade students. The students learned about renewable vs. non-renewable energy sources and how to help conserve resources both at the school and home. They also conducted hands-on experiments and performed energy audits in all the classrooms to come up with ways to help educate their fellow classmates, teachers, and staff on why it is important to save energy.

The following are a few activities the students completed this school year:

– Created educational displays out of recycled materials on different energy sources such as coal, solar and nuclear.

– Conducted energy audits and gave each classroom a grade on how well they were conserving energy.

– Managed a recycling game booth at the school’s fall carnival and created prizes out of recycled materials.

– Created windmills for an experiment to see if they could accomplish work by running only off of wind energy.

“The students showed a lot of dedication and hard work this year coming up with new and exciting ideas to help spread the word of energy conservation among their fellow classmates and throughout the school and community. I am very proud of their accomplishments, and the 5th grade students will move on to middle school knowing that they have left a positive impression on Ogden Elementary,” said Mindy Nicoll.

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