NCERT Solutions for Class 5th The World Around Us Chapter 4 What each team should observe — Be a School Explorer!

Book page 57–58 Updated on2026-09-19

Q1.

Electricity Savers — Are lights and fans ʻonʼ when no one is using them? Do the classrooms use natural light? Which areas of the school feel the hottest and the coolest during the day?

Answer

What this team does: walk through the school twice — once at about 11 a.m. and once during the lunch break, when many rooms are empty — and write down what is running with nobody in the room.

Question	How to check it	What you are likely to find
Are lights and fans on with no one there?	Look into every empty room at lunch break. Count fans on and lights on.	Usually yes — most often in classrooms after the class has gone for games or assembly, and in the corridor and toilet lights left on all day
Do classrooms use natural light?	Stand in the room and switch the lights off for a moment. Can you still read your book?	Rooms with windows on two sides are bright enough till about 3 p.m. with no lights at all. Corner rooms and rooms with a wall close outside stay dark and need the lights.
Which area is hottest?	Walk round at about 1 p.m. and feel it. Note the roof, the wall colour and whether there is a tree.	Hottest: the top-floor room, the room under a tin sheet roof, the open cemented courtyard, and any room facing west in the afternoon
Which area is coolest?	Same walk, same time.	Coolest: under the big tree, the ground-floor room with cross-ventilation, the north-facing verandah, and any room with a light-coloured roof

Why the hot and cool areas matter: A hot room needs more fans, so it uses more electricity, and the children in it cannot concentrate. If you find that the room under the tin roof is the hottest, you have also found the room where a white coat of paint on the roof, or a tree planted on that side, will do the most good.

The one action worth taking: Make a rule that the last child out of a room switches off the fan and the light, and put a small painted sign by every door — “Last one out, switch it off”. It costs nothing and works.

Q2.

Green Guardians — Are there trees or plants in the school? Who takes care of them? Where can we plant more? Do birds or butterflies visit these areas? Is there a compost pit in the school?

Answer

What this team does: count and name the plants, find out who waters them, and look for the empty patches where more could grow.

Question	A sample finding from a real school walk
Are there trees or plants?	14 trees in all — 3 neem, 2 peepal, 4 gulmohar, 1 mango, 2 ashoka, 2 coconut — and 11 pots on the office verandah
Who takes care of them?	The gardener waters the pots. Nobody waters the young saplings, which is why two of last year's five have dried up.
Where can we plant more?	Along the boundary wall behind the playground; the bare strip beside the toilet block; the empty patch near the gate; and pots on the corridor edge where there is no soil
Do birds or butterflies visit?	Yes — sparrows and mynas on the neem, a pair of bulbuls in the ashoka, crows on the peepal, and butterflies wherever there are flowers. Very few come to the bare cemented courtyard.
Is there a compost pit?	Often no. If there is one, check whether it is being used or has become an ordinary rubbish pit.

Why “who takes care of them” is the sharpest question: Every school plants trees. Far fewer schools have a person, or a class, responsible for watering them. That single missing thing is why most planted saplings die in their first summer. Finding this out is worth more than counting the trees.

The one action worth taking: Make a watering roster — one class per week, two children per day, one bucket per sapling. Pin it on the notice board with names. Ownership keeps trees alive.

Q3.

Water Watchers — Are there any leaking taps? Is water being wasted? Are water tanks clean and covered? Are there any wet places that could be breeding mosquitoes?

Answer

What this team does: visit every tap in the school with a notebook — the drinking-water taps, the taps in the toilets, the tap near the kitchen, and the one in the garden that everybody forgets.

Question	How to check	What to write down
Any leaking taps?	Close each tap fully. Wait ten seconds and watch.	The exact place of each dripping tap — “toilet block, second tap from the left”. A vague report gets ignored; an exact one gets fixed.
Is water being wasted?	Watch the drinking point during the break.	Taps left running while a child fills a bottle; children washing hands with the tap fully open; the overhead tank overflowing at filling time
Are tanks clean and covered?	Ask the caretaker to show you. Never climb up yourself.	Whether the lid is missing or broken, and when the tank was last cleaned
Any wet places breeding mosquitoes?	Look for standing water that has stayed for a week or more.	Old tyres, broken pots, the plate under a flower pot, a clogged drain, the puddle below the drinking-water tap, an unused bucket

Why standing water is dangerous: A mosquito lays its eggs only in still water, and the eggs need about a week of undisturbed water to become mosquitoes. So water that stands for a week is what causes dengue and malaria — not one day's puddle. Tipping out the water in a flower-pot plate every few days breaks that chain completely.

The one action worth taking: Give the office one written list of every leaking tap, with its exact location, and check the same list again after two weeks. Following up is what makes a survey useful.

Q4.

Traffic Trackers — What happens outside the school gate during arrival and exit times? Is there a pedestrian crossing across the road for children? Do vehicles speed in front of the school?

Answer

What this team does: stand safely inside the gate — never on the road — with a teacher, for ten minutes at arrival and ten at closing time, and watch.

Question	What is usually found
What happens at the gate?	Everything happens at once. Autos, vans and two-wheelers stop right across the gate. Children step out onto the road between parked vehicles. Parents wait in the middle of the road. Vehicles reverse where children are walking. The busiest and most dangerous ten minutes of the whole day.
Is there a pedestrian crossing?	Often there is none, or the white stripes have faded until they cannot be seen. Sometimes there is one, but it is 50 metres away and nobody uses it.
Do vehicles speed?	Yes, especially when the road is straight and there is no speed breaker or “School Ahead” sign. Count how many vehicles pass in one minute and how many slow down — the second number is usually small.

Why the gate is the risky spot: A child stepping out from between two parked vehicles cannot see the road, and the driver cannot see the child. Both are hidden from each other until the last second. That is why parking away from the gate matters more than any other single change.

Safety first: Never do this survey standing on the road, and never alone. Watch from behind the gate, with a teacher, and write from there.

Q5.

Waste Warriors — Where do you find litter? What kinds of litter do you see? Are there enough dustbins around the school? Are the students using these bins? Why or why not? Are there separate bins for food waste and other waste?

Answer

What this team does: walk the whole school and mark on your school map every place where litter collects. Then stand near a bin and simply watch what people do.

Question	What is usually found
Where do you find litter?	Behind the classrooms, under the staircase, along the boundary wall, around the playground edge, near the school gate and the shop outside, and under the desks after the lunch break
What kinds of litter?	Mostly chips and biscuit wrappers, chocolate and toffee wrappers, plastic bottles, paper scraps and pencil shavings, and food leftovers with banana and orange peels
Are there enough dustbins?	Usually there are bins near the office and the staff room, but none where the litter actually is — the playground and the corridor outside the classrooms
Are students using them?	Only when a bin is within a few steps. If the nearest bin is far, or overflowing, or has no lid and smells, most children drop the wrapper where they stand.
Separate bins for food and other waste?	Often the two bins exist but are not labelled, so everything gets mixed anyway — and then the whole point is lost

Why “why or why not” is the important half of the question: Children are not being careless on purpose. Litter appears where the bins are not. Put a bin where the wrappers actually fall — at the playground edge and the corridor — and most of the litter disappears without anybody being scolded. Fix the place, not the person.

The one action worth taking: Put a clearly labelled pair of bins — green for wet, blue for dry — at the two places your map shows the most litter. Painted labels and a picture of what goes in work better than words alone.

Was this helpful?