Climate+Change+Curriculum

This activity was for 9/10th grade students. Click the link to see details including examples of student work: @http://sealespcsphys.pbworks.com/w/page/34507010/Climate-Change-Project

From: Mary Beth Nawor, Lake Forest High School Here’s what I tried for teaching climate last year and it worked great: Many kids had wonderful discussions with their friends and families after they viewed the glog. All of the students came away with a way to address each argument and they felt empowered by the clarity of the information in answering specific questions. Having them create the questions, with the help of family and friends who took the survey, gave more legitimacy to the project than if I had chosen the questions. It took longer, but they came away with a much more detailed understanding and felt more sure of their arguments.
 * 1) Because there is so much misinformation and skepticism about climate change, I decided to have my students brainstorm information they think about climate change or things they have heard.
 * 2) Once they had their list together, they made a survey and used Survey Monkey to get feedback from family members and their friends. The list they compiled from the survey included things like “the earth is warming but it’s just a natural cycle”
 * 3) From the results of the survey, each pair of students took a question and did research. I had the librarians come to class and talk about “peer-reviewed” science journals. They directed students to certain databases.
 * 4) Students then used Glogster to make a glog answering each of the questions. Included as a link was an annotated bibliography so the source of the material was available to anyone interested.
 * 5) We then allowed everyone who participated in the survey to view the glog including parents.

From: Cornelia 'Lia' Harris, Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, Millbrook, NY  I have an assignment that I use where we first go through climate evidence in jigsaw groups (long term temperature records, sea level rise, glacier declines, ice out records, growing season changes), then look at some denier websites, and then investigate the people and science behind the denier websites (mainly using Greenpeace’s Exxon Secrets website). It’s a nice discussion to have with students, and not just in terms of funding and bias in science research and advocacy. It gets them to really think about some of the conflicting claims, such as whether an increase in carbon dioxide, which is good for plants, is actually good for us, etc ([|www.co2science.org] is one of them). I’ve received close to 100 responses asking for the assignment, so I dropped it on this website: []. Click on the link to “Climate Change Investigation” and you’ll see that I wrote up a short synopsis of how this plays out in the classroom. Please note that your students should understand certain things before beginning, such why sea levels are rising, why plants both take in and give off carbon dioxide, etc. Getting students to really understand some of the claims made by the deniers is hard, and is probably beyond what is possible in most classrooms (as evidenced by the controversy over the Climategate emails, which ended up being about dealing with data and not really the science behind it)…but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a good goal to have! Another note; much of the data I have the students investigate relates to New England, but some of it is global. 