Lead an interactive energy conservation lesson with this teacher guide. Includes discussion prompts, sorting activities, and data analysis to connect science and sustainability.
Energy After the Feast: Holiday Activity
Summary
Turn post-holiday leftovers into a powerful lesson about energy and sustainability. Energy After the Feast helps students explore what happens to waste from food scraps and packaging to unused ingredients and discover how these materials store energy that can be recovered, reused, or conserved.
In this hands-on activity, students classify waste from a holiday meal into four Energy Pathways: Compost/Biogas, Recycling, Food Donation, and Landfill. Through sorting, quantitative reasoning, and reflection, they learn how everyday choices connect to systems of energy recovery, material reuse, and conservation.
The lesson combines practical learning and critical thinking with cross-curricular connections in science, environmental studies, and math. Students estimate energy recovery potential for materials such as aluminum, paper, and food waste, analyze trade-offs between recovery and reduction, and evaluate which community-level strategies save the most energy overall.
Designed for grades 6–12, the activity includes a Teacher Guide, Student Handout, Energy Pathway Bin Cards, and Meal Item Cards, making it easy to implement in classrooms or community workshops. Optional extensions, including a Claim-Evidence-Reasoning (CER) challenge, deepen analysis and connect science to civic action.
Aligned with NGSS standards (MS-ESS3-3, HS-ESS3-4) and crosscutting concepts in energy, systems thinking, and human impact, Energy After the Feast helps students understand that energy is not only produced but also preserved through the choices we make every day.
Activities
Student Guide
Engage students with this interactive holiday energy activity. Includes sorting, data analysis, and a CER challenge where students decide whether conserving or recovering energy has the greatest impact.
Answer Key
Use this complete answer key to support your classroom energy conservation lesson. Includes example answers, explanations, and CER reasoning samples to help guide student analysis and discussion.
Downloadables