Living Walls
Students investigate issues surrounding the conservation of energy and calculating energy efficiency. They explore these using the context of a living wall and how these can be used in contemporary school buildings to reduce carbon emissions.
Living walls are becoming more common in our cities, but how can these improve both energy efficiency and local biodiversity? This is important because energy use in buildings is one of the leading contributers to global carbon emissions.
In this module students are inspired to experiement with different ways to improve building insulation, and how a living wall offers both a practical and beautiful solution. In addition, they will become aware of the interlinked nature of energy and biodiversity issues. They will also research how plants can reduce air pollution.
A significant challenge for the teacher is to enable their students to get meaningful results for their required practical investigations. We have, therefore, created a framework (Stage 2) to allow this to happen within a rich diverse context. We describe a local scenario, with some flexibility for students to be creative.