Energy Resources & Conservation Activity: 8 Hands-On Stations for Reducing, Reusing, and Recycling (TEKS 4.11B)

Chris Kesler · 8 min read

Global plastic production has gone from almost zero in 1950 to over 400 million tons a year today. That curve isn't a slow climb. It's a hockey stick. And the kicker: most of that plastic gets used once and thrown away. A lot of it ends up in the ocean, getting tangled around penguins and broken into tiny pieces that fish eat by mistake.

Walk into a 4th-grade classroom and ask kids what they could do about it, and most of them shrug. "I'm just one kid. What can I do?" That's the misconception that runs underneath this whole standard. Conservation isn't something that happens at a recycling plant. It happens when one fourth-grader turns off the water while brushing their teeth, or recycles a notebook, or convinces their parents to put solar panels on the roof.

That's TEKS 4.11B. It asks 4th graders to investigate the impact of energy resources on Earth, including reusing, reducing, and recycling, and the importance of energy conservation.

The Impact of Energy Resources Station Lab for TEKS 4.11B takes that idea hands-on. Kids play a board game where every space (turn off the lights, leave the TV on overnight, walk to school, take a long shower) costs or earns "energy chips." They study the global plastics production curve and a world map of plastic ocean pollution. Then they sort 15 statements into three columns: Conservation, Disposal, and Recycling, until they can explain how each of the three Rs actually protects Earth's resources.

⏱ 1–2 class periods 📓 4th Grade Science 🧪 TEKS 4.11B 🎯 Built-in differentiation 💻 Print or Digital

8 hands-on stations for teaching energy resources, conservation, and recycling

A station lab is a student-led activity where small groups rotate through 8 stations (plus a 9th challenge station for early finishers) at their own pace during one to two class periods. You become a facilitator instead of a lecturer. You walk around, spot-check, and break misconceptions while the kids work through the rotation.

The Impact of Energy Resources Station Lab has four input stations (where students take in new information on how we use Earth's resources and how we can conserve them) and four output stations (where they show what they learned). Here's what's at each one.

📷 Image slot 1 — add screenshot

📷 Image slot 2 — add screenshot

4 input stations: how students learn the impact of energy resources

🎬 Watch It! —

A short YouTube video introduces conservation in 4th-grade-friendly terms. Three questions on the answer sheet check whether students caught the big ideas: what conservation means, what can happen if we don't conserve our natural resources, and one simple way they can conserve natural resources every day. The third question is the one that turns the abstract concept into a concrete action plan.

📖 Read It! —

A one-page passage called "Conserve, Recycle, and Protect" frames the topic around a relatable kid afternoon (school bell rings, ride the bus home, grab an apple from the fridge, microwave popcorn, plug in the computer for homework). The passage names three ways to stretch Earth's energy resources: conserve (turn off lights, turn off water while brushing teeth, sleep mode on devices), dispose properly (batteries go to special drop-offs, food composts), and recycle (sort items into bins, repurpose old things, donate). Three multiple-choice questions follow, plus the vocabulary section for energy resource, fossil fuels, conserve, dispose, and recycle. Comes in two reading levels (Dependent and Modified) plus a Spanish version.

🔬 Explore It! —

A board game called the Energy Conservation Game. Each student gets 10 energy chips, a game piece, and one die. Players roll, move, and follow the directions on whatever space they land on. Some spaces gain energy chips (recycle your old notebook +2, turn off the lights when you leave the room +1, walk or bike to school instead of using a car +3, use a refillable water bottle +2, install energy-efficient light bulbs +2, plant a tree +3, use solar panels to power your home +3). Other spaces lose energy chips (leave the TV on overnight -1, leave your computer plugged in overnight -1, take a long shower -1, leave windows open with the air conditioning on -2, forget to turn off the water while washing dishes -1, throw away food scraps instead of composting -2, leave your gaming console on while not playing -1). Three follow-up questions ask which space helped them gain energy chips and why, how losing chips showed what happens when we waste energy, and one change they could make in their daily life. Kids talk about the game for days.

💻 Research It! —

Eight reference cards built around real environmental data. Card 1 is the global plastics production graph from Our World in Data, going from near-zero in 1950 to over 400 million tons by 2019. Card 2 is a world map showing plastic waste emitted into the ocean per capita in 2019, with darker red countries emitting the most. Card 3 is a photograph of a penguin trapped in a plastic fishing net. Cards 4 through 6 explain in kid-friendly language how plastic use has exploded, how most plastic enters the ocean accidentally (left on the ground, blows into rivers and drains), how it breaks into tiny pieces fish mistake for food, and how marine animals get stuck in nets and bags or eat tiny plastic that blocks their stomachs. Four wrap-up questions ask how plastic has impacted the environment, what they notice about the countries that emit the most plastic into the oceans, how plastic affects marine animals, and how it affects humans.

📷 Featured station deep-dive — add screenshot of the Explore It! task card

4 output stations: how students show what they learned

📋 Organize It! —

A three-column card sort across 15 statements. Conservation column: turning off water when washing dishes, powering down your device instead of keeping it in sleep mode, protection of resources, using both sides of the paper, planting a tree. Disposal column: broken wind turbines get put into landfill, burning coal releases pollution into the air, getting rid of resources, composting food, putting hazardous waste in special drop-off location. Recycling column: putting used paper into the recycling bin, turning empty cereal boxes into paper organizer, changing resources into reusable material, donating items you no longer need or want, putting the glass jars into glass bins. The 15-card three-way sort is harder than a two-column sort, and this is the cleanest place in the lab to spot whether kids really understand the difference between conserving (using less in the first place), disposing of properly (getting rid of waste the right way), and recycling (turning waste into new resources).

🎨 Illustrate It! —

Students draw a two-scene sketch. Scene 1: one way we use energy resources in our daily lives (a home with electricity, a car using gasoline, washing dishes, microwave popcorn, anything). Scene 2: how we can conserve, dispose of, or recycle the natural resource used in scene 1. The before-and-after structure forces kids to connect the resource they use to a specific action they could take, which is the whole goal of the standard.

✍️ Write It! —

Three open-ended questions in complete sentences. First, what might happen if there's a water scarcity? Second, why should batteries not go into the trash? Third, why is it important to conserve energy at home and school? The water scarcity question forces kids to think past the faucet into the whole community impact. The battery question pulls directly from the Read It! passage about hazardous waste drop-offs. The third question is the big-picture defense kids need to give whenever someone asks why this matters.

📝 Assess It! —

Three multiple-choice questions plus a fill-in-the-paragraph that uses the five Read It! vocabulary words (conserve, energy resource, fossil fuels, dispose, recycle). The multiple choice asks which is NOT a non-renewable energy source (solar power), how recycling helps protect the environment (it reduces the amount of waste going into landfills and oceans), and what happens when we don't conserve energy (we use up resources faster). The fill-in paragraph weaves the vocabulary into one coherent statement about saving resources for the future. If you're grading this lab, this is the easiest station to grade.

Bonus Challenge It! station for early finishers

🏆 Challenge It! —

Four optional extensions: Trash Becoming a Treasure (pick an item your family often throws away and design a way to repurpose it); Crossword Puzzle (build a crossword with at least seven words/phrases from this unit, plus an answer key); Creative Story (write a short story where a superhero saves a world that didn't know about conservation and recycling); or Create an Ad (write a commercial that persuades people in your community to conserve resources and dispose of items correctly, using information from the station lab). Requires teacher approval before they start.

How this fits into a complete Conservation and Recycling unit

This Station Lab is the Explore day of our full Impact of Energy Resources Complete 5E Lesson for TEKS 4.11B. The complete two-week unit follows the 5E method of instruction and includes an Engage hook, the Impact of Energy Resources Station Lab for Explore, PowerPoint slides and interactive notebook pages for Explain, student choice projects to Elaborate, and an Evaluate assessment.

Most 4th-grade teachers I work with grab the full 5E because the Station Lab lands hardest with the days around it. But if you just need a strong hands-on day on conservation, recycling, and how kids can actually impact Earth's resources, the Station Lab on its own does the job.

Two options

Impact of Energy Resources 5E Lesson cover

Full 5E Lesson $13.20 Get the 5E Lesson

Impact of Energy Resources Station Lab cover

Just the Station Lab $7.20 Get the Station Lab

Materials needed to teach energy resources and conservation

Materials beyond what's in the download:

One die per Explore It! group for the Energy Conservation board game. Any standard six-sided die works. Most 4th-grade classrooms already have a few in the math cabinet.
Small game pieces (one per student playing) for the Explore It! board game. Coins, dry beans, paper clips, mini erasers, or pencil-top toppers all work fine. Each game space holds about 4-6 students.
Energy chips for the board game: 10 per student playing. The download includes a printable page of lightning bolt chips. Print 5–6 copies, cut them out, and put them in a small cup at the station.
Colored pencils or markers for the Illustrate It! before-and-after sketches.
Pencils and the printed answer sheets (included)
A device with internet for the Watch It! station

If you're like most 4th-grade teachers, the only thing you might not have on hand is the cut-out lightning bolt chips. Print those at the beginning of the week, and you're set. Total cost for a class of 30: under $5.

Standard covered: Texas TEKS 4.11B —

Investigate the impact of energy resources on Earth, including reusing, reducing, and recycling, and the importance of energy conservation.

See the full standard breakdown →

Grade level: 4th grade Earth science

Time: One to two class periods (45–110 minutes total). Plan for two periods the first time you run a station lab. The Explore It! board game runs about 12–15 minutes, which is longer than a typical input station.

Common student misconceptions this lab fixes

"I'm just one kid. One person can't really make a difference in conservation."
This is the most common 4th-grade attitude on 4.11B, and it kills the standard before the lesson starts. The Explore It! board game directly attacks this. Every space on the board is one person's choice (one kid turning off the lights, one kid recycling a notebook, one kid taking a long shower instead of a short one), and every choice changes the energy chip count. Multiply that by 30 kids in a class, hundreds of kids in a school, thousands of households in a city, and the "one kid" math turns into real impact. The Watch It! question (one simple way YOU can conserve every day) and the Write It! question on why it matters at home and school both force kids to write themselves into the solution.
"If something is in a recycling bin, it gets recycled. So as long as I put it in the right bin, I'm done."
4th graders treat the recycling bin as a magic disposal box. The Read It! passage and the Organize It! card sort push past that by separating conservation, disposal, and recycling into three different categories with three different jobs. Conservation is using less in the first place (turning off water, using both sides of the paper). Disposal is getting rid of waste the right way (composting food, taking hazardous waste to drop-offs, putting broken wind turbines in landfills). Recycling is turning old material into new material (paper into organizers, glass jars into new jars). All three matter, but they're not the same thing. By the time kids finish the three-column sort, they know that putting something in the recycling bin is one piece of a bigger picture.
"Pollution and plastic in the ocean are far away problems. They don't really connect to what I do."
The Research It! station hits this misconception directly. The plastic production graph shows the curve doubling every couple of decades. The ocean plastic per capita world map shows which countries are dumping the most into the ocean. And the photo of a penguin trapped in a fishing net puts a face on what the abstract numbers mean. Card 5 explains that most plastic enters the ocean accidentally (left on the ground, blown into rivers and drains). That one sentence is the bridge to the kid's own life: dropping a plastic wrapper in the parking lot doesn't end at the parking lot. The Research It! wrap-up question on how plastic in the oceans affects humans completes the loop.

What you get with this Energy Resources and Conservation activity

📷 Inside-the-product — add screenshot of Read It passage or sample answer sheet

When you buy the Station Lab, you get a single download with everything you need:

Print version at two reading levels (Dependent for on-grade, Modified for additional support) plus a Spanish Read It! passage
Digital version as PowerPoint files (works in Google Slides too) at both levels — for 1:1 classrooms or Google Classroom
Teacher Directions and Answer Key for both versions, all keys included
Station task cards ready to print, laminate, and drop in baskets at each station
Reference cards for the Research It! station (8 cards including the global plastic production graph, the world map of ocean plastic per capita, the penguin photo, and four explanation cards on how plastic ends up in the ocean and what it does to marine animals)
Energy Conservation Game board and lightning bolt chip page for the Explore It! station, ready to print and cut
Sort cards for the Organize It! station (15 statements split three ways between Conservation, Disposal, and Recycling)
Student answer sheets for each level

Tips for teaching conservation and recycling in your 4th grade classroom

Two things make this lab go smoother the first time:

1. Pre-cut the lightning bolt energy chips before the lab.

The Explore It! board game gives every student 10 lightning bolt chips, and they use them as they gain and lose energy on the board. The download includes a printable page of lightning bolts, but if you wait until lab day to cut them out, you'll burn 15 minutes of prep that should have happened the night before. Print 5–6 copies, cut them out in front of the TV the night before, and put them in a small cup at the station. The game pacing depends on every group having chips ready to go from the moment they sit down.

2. Talk about the plastic production curve before the lab.

The Research It! station's plastic production graph is the most powerful visual in the lab, but 4th graders need help reading line graphs that climb steeply. Project the graph for two minutes before kids start the rotation and walk them through what near-zero in 1950 means versus over 400 million tons in 2019. Once they've seen you read it, they'll get a lot more out of it at the station. Same idea for the world map: take 30 seconds to point out that darker red means more plastic per person, then send them on.

Get this Energy Resources and Conservation activity

Impact of Energy Resources Station Lab for 4th grade Earth science — TEKS 4.11B

Buy the Station Lab — $7.20

Or if you want the full two-week experience with the Engage hook, Explain day, Elaborate extension, and Evaluate assessment all included:

Buy the full 5E Complete Lesson — $13.20

(Station Lab is included)

Frequently asked questions

What does TEKS 4.11B cover?

Texas TEKS 4.11B asks 4th grade students to investigate the impact of energy resources on Earth, including reusing, reducing, and recycling, and the importance of energy conservation. Students should be able to explain how everyday actions (turning off lights, recycling paper, composting food) connect to bigger environmental impacts like fossil fuel use and ocean pollution.

What's the difference between conservation, disposal, and recycling?

Conservation is using less of a resource in the first place. Turning off the water while brushing your teeth or using both sides of the paper is conservation. Disposal is getting rid of waste the right way (composting food, taking batteries to a special drop-off, putting hazardous waste somewhere safe). Recycling is changing used materials into new ones (turning paper into a new notebook, glass jars into new jars). The Organize It! card sort makes this distinction concrete with 15 real-world examples.

How long does this Energy Resources and Conservation activity take?

One to two class periods (45 to 110 minutes total). The Explore It! Energy Conservation board game takes 12–15 minutes, which is the longest piece. Plan for two periods the first time you run a station lab. Once your class has the rotation routine down, most groups can finish all 8 stations in one period.

Do I need a lot of supplies for this?

Almost nothing. A die per group, small game pieces (coins or beans), cut-out lightning bolt chips from the download, colored pencils for the sketch, and a device with internet for the Watch It! station. Total cost for a class of 30 if you're starting from nothing: under $5.

Can I use this in a 1:1 digital classroom?

Yes. The full digital version (PowerPoint or Google Slides) works in 1:1 classrooms and Google Classroom. Students drag digital cards at the Organize It! three-way sort, click through the reference cards, and type their answers on the answer sheet. The Explore It! board game is harder to digitize because the physical chips are part of the fun. If you're fully digital, swap to printing just the game board and chips and have kids do that one station in person.