Girls Go Techbridge Make It Green Make It Green is a program-in-a-box about eco-friendly design and construction. The kit consists of icebreakers, career activities and a hands-on project that help girls think about the human impact on the environment. The main activity for this unit has the girls creating their own model green room in a shoebox. Here is an example [pass around shoebox]. Girls also work through their Girl Portfolio, a workbook included in the kit. It has icebreakers and career activities embedded in the portfolio, and guides girls through designing their green room in a shoebox.

Icebreaker: Ecological Footprint Here’s a girl showing off her Green Room shoebox. You can see she’s got a green roof, with a wind turbine, and solar panels. This is the final product after working through Make It Green. Girls use the Ecological Footprint quiz in their Girl Portfolios to assess how much of the earth’s resources they use in a normal day. The activity asks them add up the total number of earths they walked and that number is their footprint. It means that if everyone in the world lived like they did, it would take that many earths full of resources to sustain them.

What Green Material Am I? The next activity is the “What Green Material Am I?” matching game, which helps the girls learn about environmentally friendly materials that are used to build homes. They’ll get to incorporate some of these ideas in their shoeboxes. cork tree cork flooring

Green House Link-Up Green House Link-Up is a career activity (pp. 30-34 in the Leader’s Guide). When working with girls, Techbridge highly recommends leaders complete this career activity or invite a guest Role Model in to meet your girls. Girls will virtually meet our career card women by working through the Girl Portfolio, but Career Cards are also included in the box. They feature these “avatars” of real women role models. You can see their actual photos on the backs of the career cards in the box. Career Activities help girls make the connection between the “crafty” project of making a green room in a shoebox and the real world opportunities available to them.

Green Construction Mix and Match The Green Construction Matching Game is done in pairs. Girls learn about other green construction methods, such as solar panels or skylights that they might incorporate into their shoebox green houses. high-efficiency appliances solar panels and double-paned windows

Green Room Planning In “Green Room Planning”, girls will choose one of the room cards to get their Room Assignment. This will be their room of the house to design. Later, they’ll match up their rooms to complete a whole house as a team as they’re doing in this photo. In their Girl Portfolio, girls will meet the architect and draw floorplans for their green rooms. They will also fill out the “My Green Room” worksheet where they figure out what is normally found in their type of room, and then choose a green alternative for each of those items. The girls have “Green Materials 101” reference sheets in their Girl Portfolios to help them find eco-friendly options.

I Spy Something Green “I Spy Something Green” is a short activity in the Girl Portfolios. It is helpful to remind girls about green construction practices if it’s been a few days or weeks since they last worked in the Make It Green box. “I’m Building a Green House” is a quick icebreaker on p. 52 of the Leader’s Guide also designed to jog girls’ memory about green features in a house. Use these if they’re helpful for your girls.

Time to Build Your Green Room! There are some materials provided in the box, but it is always best if you or the girls can provide additional recycled materials (jars, bottle caps, fabrics, etc.) to keep with the “green” re-purposed theme. As girls finish their interiors, direct them to Exterior Design (p. 11 of their Girl Portfolio). The girls can use the lids of the shoeboxes to add green elements such as solar panels, rooftop garden, rainwater collection system, etc.

Who Would I Hire? “Who Would I Hire” is a career activity that quizzes your girls on all of the careers they’ve met and role played in this kit. The point of this career activity is to determine whether girls are beginning to understand the specialties and differences of the engineers and designers they’ve encountered in the Make It Green box. Are they connecting the fun they’ve had cutting, gluing and decorating to actual careers and opportunities to make the world a better place?

Techbridge Award in Green Design TAGD Certification Techbridge Award in Green Design Labeling and Certification is the last step for the green design process. Girls label all of the green aspects of their rooms then use the certification worksheet (on the last page of the girl portfolio) to give each room a point value on the TAGD scale. Girls can get individual scores, and then come together to create a whole house and get a second score. Allow time for girls to show and tell about the green aspects of their rooms as well as to make the girls feel proud of their awards. This is a great opportunity to invite a role model, perhaps a LEED expert from an eco-friendly company in your community, to come in and certify the girls’ houses, and share what she does in engineering and design.

Questions about Make It Green? [Trainer: allow time for questions, and emphasize the importance of pre- and post-surveys for each girl user.]