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Prezi on climate change: Find lesson plans and Prezi videos | Prezi

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Explore well-researched educational materials on climate change for teachers and students. Find lesson plans, videos, and more with Prezi in the classroom.

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The science that affects our world
The Earth's global temperature is warming, meaning that weather patterns and ecosystems are changing more quickly than animal species and human communities can adapt to.
Our new introductory climate change resources have been designed to introduce the topic of climate change to students aged 7 -11. Secondary school students, and primary school students with an existing knowledge of climate change, can further explore the affects climate change is having on our world through our series of engaging curriculum linked programmes and activities. Tell us how your school is helping to tackle climate change to claim your Climate Hero certificate.

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Our climate change resources have been designed to introduce the topic of the affects climate change is having on our world

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Check out interesing ideas in this article.

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NPR/Ipsos conducted a national poll recently and found that more than 8 in 10 teachers - and a similar majority of parents - support teaching kids about climate change.

But in reality, it's not always happening: Fewer than half of K-12 teachers told us that they talk about climate change with their children or students. Again, parents were about the same.

The top reason that teachers gave in our poll for not covering climate change? "It's not related to the subjects I teach," 65% said.

Yet at the same time, we also heard from teachers and education organizations who are introducing the topic in subjects from social studies to math to English language arts, and at every grade level, from preschool on up.

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That raises the question: Where does climate change belong in the curriculum, anyway?

The "reality of human-caused climate change" is mentioned in at least 36 state standards, according to an analysis done for NPR Ed by Glenn Branch, the deputy director at the National Center for Science Education. But it typically appears only briefly - and most likely just in earth science classes in middle and high school. And, Branch says, that doesn't even mean that every student in those states learns about it: Only two states require students to take earth or environmental science classes to graduate from high school.

Joseph Henderson teaches in the environmental studies department at Paul Smith's College in upstate New York. He studies how climate change is taught in schools and believes it needs to be taught across many subjects.

"For so long this has been seen as an issue that is solely within the domain of science," he says. "There needs to be a greater engagement across disciplines, particularly looking at the social dimensions," such as the displacement of populations by natural disasters.

At the same time, there's a tension in pushing more educators to take this on. "I worry a lot about asking schools to solve yet another problem that society refuses to deal with."

As a potential response to this criticism, the nonprofit Ten Strands follows an "incremental infusion" model in California. In other words, environmental literacy becomes part of subjects and activities that are already in the curriculum instead of, the organization says, "burdening educators" with another stand-alone and complex area to cover.

We also heard from teachers who say they are searching for more ideas and resources to take on the topic of climate change. Here are some thoughts about how to broach the subject with students, no matter what subject you teach:
1. Do a lab.
Lab activities can be one of the most effective ways to show children how global warming works on an accessible scale.

Ellie Schaffer is a sixth-grader at Alice Deal Middle School in Washington, D.C. In science class, she has done simulations on greenhouse effects, using plastic wrap to trap the sun's heat. And she has used charcoal to see how black carbon from air pollution can speed the melting of ice.

These lessons have raised her awareness - and concern. "We've ignored climate change for a long time and now it's getting to be, like, a real problem, so we've gotta do something."

Many teachers we talked with mentioned NASA as a resource for labs and activities. The ones in this outline can be done with everyday materials such as ice, tinfoil, plastic bottles, rubber, light bulbs and a thermometer.

On the Earth Science Week website, there's a list of activities and lesson plans aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards. They range from simple to elaborate.
2. Show a movie.
Susan Fisher, a seventh-grade science teacher at South Woods Middle School in Syosset, N.Y., showed her students the 2016 documentary Before the Flood, featuring Leonardo DiCaprio journeying to five continents and the Arctic to see the effects of climate change. "It is our intention to make our students engaged citizens," Fisher says.

Before the Flood has an action page and an associated curriculum. Common Sense Media has a list of climate change-related movies for all ages.

The 2006 film An Inconvenient Truth and its 2017 sequel, An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth To Power, have curricular materials created in partnership with the National Wildlife Federation.
3. Assign a novel.
Rebecca Meyer is an eighth-grade English language arts teacher at Bronx Park Middle School in New York City.

She assigned her students a 2013 novel by Mindy McGinnis called Not a Drop to Drink.

"As we read the novel, kids made connections between what is happening today and the novel," Meyer says. "At the end of the unit, as a culminating project, students chose groups, researched current solutions for physical and economic water scarcity and created PSA videos using iMovie about the problem and how their solution could help to combat the issue."

She described the unit as a success. "They were very engaged; they loved it," she explains. "A lot of them shared this information with their families. When parents came in for parent-teacher conferences, they mentioned their kids had been talking to them about conserving water."

Not A Drop To Drink belongs to a subgenre of science fiction known as " cli-fi" (climate fiction) or sometimes eco-fiction. You can find lists of similar books at websites like Dragonfly.eco or at the Chicago Review of Books, which has a monthly Burning Worlds column about this kind of literature.

Looking for English topics for younger students? EL Education covers environmental topics, including water conservation and the impact of natural disasters, in its K-5 English language arts curriculum.
4. Do citizen science.
Terry Reed is the self-proclaimed "science guru" for seventh-graders at Prince David Kawananakoa Middle School in Honolulu. He has also spent a year sailing the Caribbean, and on his way, he collected water samples on behalf of a group called Adventure Scientists, to be tested for microplastics. (Spoiler: Even on remote, pristine beaches, all the samples had some.)

He has assigned his students to collect water samples from beaches near their homes to submit for the same project. He also has them take pictures of cloud formations and measure temperatures, to see changes in weather patterns over time. "One thing I stress to them, that in the next few years, they become the voting public," he says. "They need to be aware of the science."
5. Assign a research project, multimedia presentation or speech.
Gay Collins teaches public speaking at Waterford High School in Waterford, Conn. She is interested in "civil discourse" as a tool for problem-solving, so she encourages her students "to shape their speeches around critical topics, like the use of plastics, minimalism, and other environmental issues.
6. Talk about your personal experience.
Pamela Tarango teaches third grade at the Downtown Elementary School in Bakersfield, Calif. She tells her students about how the weather has changed there in her lifetime, getting hotter and drier: "In our Central Valley California city of Bakersfield, there has been a change in the winter climate. I told them about how, when I was growing up in the 1970s, we often had several two-and-three-hour delays to school starting because of dense tule fog, which affected visibility. We really never have those delays in the metropolitan area. It is only the outlying areas, which still have two-and-three-hour dense fog delays, and they are rare even for the rural areas."

(Although the Central Valley winter has indeed become hotter and drier because of climate change, recently a University of California, Berkeley study has attributed the reduction in tule fog specifically to declines in air pollution.)
7. Do a service project.
"I teach preschoolers and use the environment and our natural resources to highlight our everyday life," says Mercy Peña-Alevizos, who teaches at Holy Trinity Academy in Phoenix. "I stress the importance of appreciation and eliminating waste. My students understand and have fantastic ideas. We recycle and pick up around our neighborhood."

Environmental service projects can be simple, elaborate or just for fun. Check out the #trashtag challenge on social media, for example.
8. Start or work in a school garden.
Mairs Ryan teaches science at St. Gregory the Great Catholic School in San Diego. "The sixth-graders oversee the school garden, as well as our vermin composting bin, christened the 'Worm Hotel'. The garden is their lab and the students 'live and learn' soil carbon sequestration and regenerative agriculture. Our school's compost bin is evidence that alternatives exist to methane-producing landfills. In looking for more solutions to reduce methane, students debate food reuse practices around the world."

Check out ThePermacultureStudent.com for resources on building school gardens with rainwater capture and compost systems to regenerate the soil. There are local and regional resources such as the Collective School Garden Network in California and Growing Minds in North Carolina, which offer basic plans for a school garden as well as lesson plans that connect gardening to Common Core standards.
Here are some more resources
After the publication of our climate poll story on Monday, we heard from people all over the country with dozens more resources for climate education.

Alliance for Climate Education has a multimedia resource called Our Climate Our Future, plus more resources for educators and several action programs for youth.

The American Association of Geographers has free online professional development resources for teachers.

American Reading Co. sells an English Language Arts curriculum called ARCCore that includes climate change themes.

Biointeractive, created by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, has hundreds of free online education resources, including many on education and the environment, and it offers professional development for teachers.

Climate Generation offers professional development for educators nationwide and a youth network in Minnesota.

CLEAN (Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness Network) has a collection of resources organized in part by the Next Generation Science Standard it is aligned with.

Global Oneness Project offers lesson plans that come with films and videos of climate impacts around the world.

Google offers free online environmental sustainability lesson plans for grades 5-8.

The Morningside Center for Teaching Social Responsibility has a group of 19 lessons for K-12.

"We believe that the social and emotional skills we help strengthen in young people and adults are sorely needed to combat the fear and avoidance we and students experience around climate change," spokesperson Laura McClure told NPR.

The National Center for Science Education has free climate change lessons that focus on combating misinformation. They also have a "scientist in the classroom" program.

The National Science Teachers Association has a comprehensive curriculum.

The Paleontological Research Institution in Ithaca, N.Y., has a book called the Teacher-Friendly Guide to Climate Change.

Ripple Effect "creates STEM curriculum" for K-6 "about real people and places impacted by climate change," starting with New Orleans.

Ten Strands offers professional learning to educators in California in partnership with the state's recycling authority and an outdoor-education program, among others.

Think Earth offers 9 environmental education units from preschool through middle school.

The Zinn Education Project (based on the work of Howard Zinn, the author of A People's History Of The United States) has launched a group of 18 lessons aimed specifically at climate justice. Some are drawn from this book: A People's Curriculum For The Earth: Teaching Climate Change And The Environmental Crisis.

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8 Ways To Teach Climate Change In Almost Any Classroom

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NPR/Ipsos conducted a national poll recently and found that more than 8 in 10 teachers - and a similar majority of parents - support teaching kids about climate change. But in reality, it's not always happening: Fewer than half of K-12 teachers told us that they talk about climate change with their children or students.

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Lesson idea on Climate Change (M.Smolčec)

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Lesson idea on Climate Change (M.Smolčec)

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NewYork Times has many interesting ready made lesson ideas and plans esp. for secondary students. If you wish you can check some shared in this post.

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Climate Refugees: Bolivia

The disappearance of Lake Poopó has not only destroyed the livelihoods of hundreds of fishing families, but also added to a new category of climate refugees.

The disappearance of Lake Poopó has not just meant a loss of livelihood for hundreds of fishing families, it is adding to the new category of climate refugees.

The disappearance of Lake Poopó has not only destroyed the livelihoods of hundreds of fishing families, but also added to a new category of climate refugees. Credit Credit... Josh Haner/The New York Times

Students might see climate change as a future threat - a prediction about what may happen in the distant future. But do they know that scientific data shows that the Earth's climate is already changing? And do they know that people and communities are already being affected by these changes?

In this lesson, students use the Times's series Carbon's Casualties to learn about how climate change is displacing people around the world. They then practice the important skill of explaining the science to a skeptical public that sometimes doubts what it doesn't see with its own eyes.

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Warm-Up and Background To get the most out of the main activities in this lesson, students should have a familiarity with the science of climate change. Teachers may want to do part of this Warm-Up as a brief refresher, or they might choose to do the entire Warm-Up as an extended background lesson before tackling the more in-depth articles.
Warm-Up: Ask students to engage in a free write for five minutes in response to the term "climate change." This practice of informal writing can encourage them to activate prior knowledge and to explore questions that they have in a nonthreatening, non-evaluative way. They can write what they know, what they think they know, what they've heard, what they're confused or unsure about, or what they want to know.

After students are done writing, ask them to turn and read their writing to a partner. After they have heard each other's writings, ask them to work together to write a collaborative summary in which they combine their ideas.

As a class, discuss what students noticed as they went through this process. What did they know? What did they learn from their peers? What was it like to engage in this process? What questions do they have? Were there disagreements?

Background: For students who have not yet learned about climate change, or who need a refresher, here are some resources they could review before or during class:

E.P.A. | The Basics of Climate Change
The New York Times | Short Answers to Hard Questions About Climate Change
NASA | Global Climate Change
The Learning Network | Teaching About Climate Change With The New York Times

After reviewing one or more of these resources, ask students to work in groups to respond to the following prompts:

* Create a working definition of climate change.
* Describe the causes of climate change.
* Describe the potential effects of climate change.

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Activity 1: Researching the Effects of Climate Change Already Taking Place

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Tabwena Kaokatekai, 42, of Buariki, a village in North Tarawa, with her newly planted mangrove trees. Erosion along the beach here has already toppled dozens of coconut trees into the ocean. Credit... Josh Haner/The New York Times

The New York Times recently published an eight-part series exploring how climate change is displacing people around the world. This series travels from a lake that disappeared in Bolivia, to a Pacific island nation slowly being swallowed by the ocean, to an Alaska town threatened by increased flooding and erosion. Other articles detail climate change's effects in China, Africa and the mainland United States.

Working in pairs or small groups, students can examine different articles and report back to the class, either through a jigsaw activity or class presentations. To prepare, they can take notes on and discuss the following questions:

* How has global climate change affected the local climate and geography of the region discussed in your article?
* How have these changes affected the people living there?
* How have the people tried to adapt to climate change's effects?
* All of these articles include images which were selected to have an impact on the reader. What do these images show? Which image is the most powerful? Describe it and discuss what makes it an effective image.
* Why is this story important for the world to know?

Here's the home page for the Carbon's Casualties series, and you can see links to the individual articles below.

You might consider including one additional article, not in the series, as part of the activity. In " Flooding of Coast, Caused by Global Warming, Has Already Begun," Justin Gillis reports on the pressure that increased flooding is placing on communities in the United States, from Virginia to Florida.

After students have presented what they learned from their article, you can encourage them to make connections between the various articles by posing the following prompts, either in writing or verbally:

* What are some links or connections that you heard between the various articles in terms of the impact of climate change?
* What do you know now about climate change that you didn't know before?

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Activity 2: Communicating the Science of Climate Change

Counties where adults discuss global warming at least occasionally. Related Article

While 97 percent of climate scientists agree that the Earth's climate is changing and these changes are likely because of human activities, the general public is more skeptical. In fact, Americans in general are less worried about climate change than much of the world. And these six maps show how divided Americans are in their thinking about climate change.

How should scientists communicate their knowledge with the larger society about the science of climate change? How should they speak about science when this is such a hot-button political issue - when the president of the United States himself has publicly called climate change a "hoax" and the new head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, rejects the scientific consensus on climate change?

The article " Katharine Hayhoe, a Climate Explainer Who Stays Above the Storm " profiles one climate scientist who has been particularly effective in spreading the word about climate change. Students should read the article, write responses to the following questions and then discuss their answers in small groups.

1. According to the author, what qualities make Dr. Hayhoe such a great explainer? In your opinion, which quality is the most powerful in terms of helping to change people's minds?
2. The author writes, "While some climate warriors treat those who are not inclined to believe them as dupes or fools, [Dr. Hayhoe] wants to talk." Have you ever experienced a situation in which someone - perhaps a friend, teacher, doctor or scientist - made you feel like a fool for not knowing something or not agreeing? What did that person do that made you feel that way? What would you recommend to that person in terms of changing his or her approach?
3. The article states, "Some in the climate community argue that congeniality like Dr. Hayhoe's can be counterproductive, especially when well-funded deniers of climate science spread disinformation and vituperation." What do you think? Can congeniality like Dr. Hayhoe's ever be counterproductive? Might a more combative approach ever be warranted? Why?
4. The article ends with Katharine Hayhoe explaining why she does not "believe" in climate change: "Gravity doesn't care whether you believe in it or not," she said, "but if you step off a cliff, you're going to go down." Why do you think the author chose to conclude the article with this sentence? What point is Dr. Hayhoe trying to illustrate?

After reading and discussing the article, students should take on the role of a climate scientist trying to address misconceptions about climate change. You can have them identify misconceptions on their own, or choose from the list below:

How can global warming be real if winter this year is so cold?
Isn't this just a normal fluctuation in earth's temperature?
There's nothing we can do about it anyway.
It would hurt our economic interests too much to do anything about climate change.
It's not going to be a problem for a long time, so why worry now?
It wouldn't be so bad to have warmer temperatures!
The weather seems normal today!
The hole in the ozone layer causes climate change.
Scientists still disagree about whether climate change is really happening.
It's not our fault!

Ask students to choose one or more misconceptions and to write a refutation text in which they act as an explainer. Rather than write an entire essay, students should explore the misconception itself - why do some people believe this? What's their evidence or reasoning? Then, use scientific evidence to refute it.

Students should keep in mind the lessons learned from reading about Dr. Hayhoe and her approach to communicating about climate change. They should consider who their audience is, and which tone would likely be most effective in their own writing. You can link this work to work that they might be doing in their E.L.A. classes, with identifying counterarguments and rebutting them.

After they have tackled these misconceptions, the class can hold a teach-in for the school or community to educate their peers and neighbors about what climate change is, and how it is already affecting the planet.

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Going Further "The Believing Game and the Doubting Game"

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What We Saw in Madagascar

President Trump has denied man-made climate change. The Times's Nicholas Kristof travels to drought-stricken Madagascar to see the unfolding crisis for himself.

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President Trump has denied man-made climate change. The Times's Nicholas Kristof travels to drought-stricken Madagascar to see the unfolding crisis for himself. Credit Credit... Ben C. Solomon/The New York Times

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A Lesson Plan About Climate Change and the People Already Harmed by It (Published 2017)

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Science Students might see climate change as a future threat - a prediction about what may happen in the distant future. But do they know that scientific data shows that the Earth's climate is already changing? And do they know that people and communities are already being affected by these changes?

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Interesting and short video on Youtube that can be also used in the classroom with students and it give introduction to Zero Waste.

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Climate Change National Geographic (M.Smolčec, CRO)

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Climate Change National Geographic (M.Smolčec, CRO)

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An interesting article with slides on comparing climate canges. Could be used in classroom.

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Seven Things to Know About Climate Change

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It's not a myth, a hoax, or a conspiracy among scientists. As we argue about the path we take, let's recall the facts that compel the journey.

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Since 2011 European Zero Waste groups have been collaborating on a voluntary basis organising events, and building off of the work done by the European members of the GAIA network. Check more on their website.

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Zero Waste Europe - Empowering Our Communities To Redesign

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"Zero Waste communities are the living examples of Circular Economy and its viability and environmental, economic, occupational benefits" (photo: European Union)