Climate Change Lesson Plans

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A Brief Mathematical Guide to Earth Science and Climate Change - NASA

This collection of activities is based on a weekly series of space science problems distributed to thousands of teachers during the 2009-2010 school year. They were intended for students looking for additional challenges in the math and physical science curriculum in grades 9 through 12. The problems were created to be authentic glimpses of modern science and engineering issues, often involving actual research data. The problems were designed to be ‘one-pagers’ with a Teacher’s Guide and AnswerKey as a second page.

Alliance for Climate Education

We educate young people on the science of climate change and empower them to take action

ASLE (Association for Literature and the Environment)

The Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE) offers access to emerging conversations and debates, innovative classroom work, as well as some of the finest environmental writing you will find anywhere. Our association works with professors, practicing writers and artists, environmental educators and activists, and environmentally concerned citizen. Most lessons and content focuus on undergraduate education.

Build Your Own Earth

Imagine creating your own world and exploring its climate and weather. That was the vision that we had for Build Your Own Earth. Even with today’s supercomputers, such a vision is not yet feasible. But, we are able to create a few worlds for you and allow you to explore them. A number of characteristics of your Earth can be varied, including the tilt of the Earth’s axis, the eccentricity of the Earth’s orbit, the solar constant, the distribution of the continents and oceans, and the carbon dioxide concentration of the atmosphere. You’ll be able to view such quantities as clouds, wind, precipitation, surface air temperature, sea-surface temperature, ocean currents, and sea ice.

Campaign Against Climate Change

The Campaign against Climate Change brings people together to push for the urgent and resolute action we need to prevent the catastrophic destabilisation of global climate.

Carbon Caper

In this activity students ‘play out’ the carbon cycle to understand how it has been affected by our use of fossil fuels since the Industrial Revolution, and how this underlies current worries about climate change.

Changing Climates Curriculum

The ‘Changing Climates’ curriculum is designed for every school-aged child: gwet the climate crisis in the classroom; adopt critical thinking; support teachers facilitating conversations; help young people move to a feeling of empowerment.

CLEAN (Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness Network

The CLEAN Collection of Climate and Energy educational resources. A collection of 700+, free ready-to-use learning resources, rigoursly reviewed by educators and scientists, suitable for elementary through higher education classrooms.

Climate Breakdown

14 lessons for 10th grade based on the question: Climate Breakdown: Do we have 12 years to stop irreversible climate change?

Climate Change, Children and Youth/ UNICEF Canada

This guide has been created to support secondary school educators in their efforts to work with youth to take action on climate change. Through the thought-provoking activities contained here, students will have the opportunity to nurture their compassion and discover how climate change is affecting children around the world, especially children in developing countries. This guide offers students a chance to engage in global climate change issues including natural disasters, food security, energy, health and water water, food , and understand their role in contributing to existing conditions, as well as opportunities for change. Students are encouraged to consider taking action on a personal, school, and community level, as well as at a global scale.

Climate Classroom Kids (NWF)

National Wildlife Federation's climate classroom, an educational toolkit The educator’s guides and activities provided here are tools you can use to do just that. The photo galleries presented here are for educators and students of all ages who love wildlife and want to learn more about these amazing animals, to better understand the effects of climate change on their habitat and to take actions to reduce carbon pollution. The lesson plans are designed for grades 3-5, with extensions for younger and older students. These activities meet national standards for English/Language Arts, Science, Social Studies, and Visual Arts.

Climate Curriculum

Teachers from Boston Public Schools and young people from the Boston Student Advisory Council (BSAC)/Youth on Board collaborated to develop a series of K-12 science lessons, all of which are aligned to state standards, to educate students about climate change and how it impacts our planet, both locally and globally.

Climate Detectives - European Space Agency

Climate Detectives is an ESA school project for students between 8 and 15 years old. Students are challenged to ‘make a difference’ in understanding and protecting Earth’s climate. They will identify a climate problem by observing their local environment and be tasked to investigate it as ‘Climate Detectives’. To this end, they will use available Earth Observation data or take measurements on the ground. Based on their investigation, teams will propose a way to help reduce the problem. The students will learn about climate on Earth as a complex and changing system and the importance of respecting our environment. A set of curricular classroom resources has been developed to encourage student's participation and motivation and to improve their understanding of Earth's climate. These resources cover the topics weather and climate, seasons, Earth and atmosphere as well as natural and human-made disasters.

Climate Change Education - Stanford University

In order to understand this, this curriculum leads students through a progression of understanding. It begins with students thinking about climate and weather, and the local impact of sea-level rise due to climate change in the first lesson. There is a three-weeks curriculum for middle school and also one for high school.

Climate Change, Global Systems Science

Originally designed for grades 9-12, Global Systems Science (GSS) focuses on science-related societal issues. Twelve books, teacher guides, and software can support a 1- to 2-year integrated science course or supplement existing biology, physics, chemistry, Earth science, and environmental science courses.

Climate Generation: A Will Steger Legacy

We offer a suite of Grades 3-12 curriculum resources in the form of curriculum guides, as well as online modules that can be downloaded for free. All of these resources are interdisciplinary and can be used in the following classes: earth science, life science, physical science, civics, economics, history, media, English Language Arts, environmental science, geography, and art.

Climate Interactive

Based on a long tradition of system dynamics modeling, our simulations and insights help people see connections, play out scenarios, and see what works to address climate change, inequity, and related issues like energy, health, and food. Suitable for high school, university and adult informal education.

Climate Kids (NASA)

Climate focused lessons appropriate for K-6

Climate Report

This activity will help students both to understand the difference between weather and climate, and to consider the impact climate change can have on their and other people’s lifestyles.

Climate Change, Wildlife and Wildlands Toolkit

The kit is designed for classroom teachers and informal educators in parks, refuges, forest lands, nature centers, zoos, aquariums, science centers, etc., and is aimed at the middle school grade level. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, in partnership with six other federal agencies—National Park Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, NOAA, NASA, U.S. Forest Service, and Bureau of Land Management—developed the kit to aid educators in teaching how climate change is affecting the Nation’s wildlife and public

Climate Literacy - Essential Principles - NOAA

Essential Principles in Climate Literacy: Climate Literacy: The Essential Principles of Climate Science presents information that is deemed important for individuals and communities to know and understand about Earth’s climate, impacts of climate change, and approaches to adaptation or mitigation. Principles in the guide can serve as discussion starters or launching points for scientific inquiry. The guide aims to promote greater climate science literacy by providing this educational framework of principles and concepts. The guide can also serve educators who teach climate science as a way to meet content standards in their science curricula.

Climatica / Portuguese Language

O equipo Climántica consta de catro grupos de traballo –didáctica, edición gráfica, multimedia e asesoría científica – que traballan coordinados mediante o uso dunha plataforma colaborativa situada na intranet da web do proxecto.

Cool Australia

Lessons in mangrove forests scientific investigation, economics, girl acitivism and persusasive speaking in topics for climate change. These are suitable for 9-12 grades. To acess go to Cool Australia, set up a free account, then search climate change.

Doc Academy

Doc Academy is the school program of Doc Society, providing free, easy-to-use resources for secondary school teachers, including: Short clips from critically-acclaimed documentary films; Standards-aligned lesson plans for high school classrooms, including learning pathways for English Language Arts, Social Studies, History, Film Studies, STEM, and other related subjects; Original content made by and tested with teachers.

Earth Labs for Educators

Earth science is emerging as a demanding high-school science course that prepares learners for college admissions and informed citizenship. EarthLabs units offer sequences for learning science concepts through hands-on experiments and data analysis. Using satellite imagery, numerical data, computer visualizations, and video, students explore Earth system processes and build quantitative skills that enable them to objectively evaluate scientific findings for themselves. The most recent set of four EarthLabs Climate modules will play a key role in helping students deepen their understanding of how our climate system works.

Elementary Globe

Elementary GLOBE is designed to introduce students in grades K-4 to the study of Earth system scienceThe Teacher Implementation Guide provides an overview of Elementary GLOBE, the connections that the curriculum makes to literacy, the use of science journals, elementary science inquiry, standards alignment, and connections to other parts of elementary curriculum. Translated versions: GLOBE makes every effort to provide translations of our materials in the official U. N. languages. Currently, Elementary GLOBE materials are available in Arabic, English, French, German, Norwegian, and Spanish."" || STEAM, E-Books,

Greenheart Education

GreenHearted.org is a primer on transformative education for sustainability ...what you'll need in order to green your classroom, your curriculum, your school community,and the heart of your life's work as a teacher. Mainly for k-12 education, with a special focus on primary education.

Global Climate Change Education Modules

The NASA GCCE ESSEA modules are designed for teachers who are taking ESSEA courses. Teachers can also use the GCCE ESSEA course modules with their students. Print them out, or have your students read them online. They have situations, connections to the standards, resources and sample investigations. Unless a module is labeled K-4, you can adapt it for middle and high school students..

Global Climate Change - Understanding the Greenhouse Effect

Students study past climate change, explore the effect of greenhouse gases on Earth's atmosphere today, and consider human impact on global warming.

Global Dimension / UK

This platform brings together resources, case studies and background information to help teachers and other educators bring a global dimension to their work.

Indiana Climate Change Education Framework

The Indiana Climate Change Education Framework offers K-12 educators, especially Indiana educators, the ability to infuse their science curriculum with climate change education. The ICCEF lists resources and links to enable educators to efficiently curate instructional resources and research that align with Purdue’s Five Critical Topics for Teaching Climate Change. These include: weather, climate and climate change; earth's climate system; earth's energy budget and the greenhouse effect; the carbon cycle; and scientific perspectives about climate change.

InTeGrate - Interdisciplinary Teaching about Earth for a Sustainable Future

InTeGrate materials engage students in understanding the earth system as it intertwines with key societal issues. They challenge students to address interdisciplinary problems, engage in geoscientific habits of mind, work with authentic geoscience data and develop system thinking. The collection is freely available and ready to be adapted by undergraduate educators across a range of courses including: general education or majors courses in Earth-focused disciplines such as geoscience or environmental science, social science, engineering, and other sciences, as well as courses for interdisciplinary programs.

Introduction to Earth's Dramatically Changing Climate

Examine evidence of climate change from different parts of Earth’s system and consider what it means to live on a planet with a dynamically changing climate.

JPL NASA

Teacher Resources for cross-cutting NGSS / cross-curricular STEM Activities, Lessons, Problem Sets, Models, Family Activities, crafting Science-Fair Project

Making the Change: Female Climate Fighters

These resources use a film narrated by poet Roger McGough to look at how women in Bolivia, Philippines, Zimbabwe and the UK have been affected by climate change, and how they are responding. Download our creative, cross-curricular teaching resources to explore the issues in greater depth with your learners.

My NASA Data

Lessons include Earth-system phenomena-driven approach, data visulization tools, maps graphs and data, lesson plans and activities, STEM Career Connections, GLOBE (Global Learning and Observation to Benefit the Environment Program) learning activities

NASA Wavelength

NASA Wavelength is your pathway into a digital collection of Earth and space science resources for educators of all levels – from elementary to college, to out-of-school programs. These resources, developed through funding of the NASA Science Mission Directorate (SMD), have undergone a peer-review process through which educators and scientists ensure the content is accurate and useful in an educational setting.

NASA

Lessons about Climate Change earth processes avaiable for Language Arts, At, Enginnering, Mathematics, Science and Technology for grades K-12

NASA Global Climate Change

Various graphs and media modules to explain repercussions of climate change.

NASA STEM for Educators

Grade appropriate climate and earth science lesson plans along with citizen science projects and research and training opportunities.

National Climate Assessment Teaching Resources

The National Climate Assessment offers a wealth of actionable science about the causes, effects, risks and possible responses to human-caused climate change. NOAA, the NCAnet Education Affinity Group, and members of the CLEAN Network have developed a series of guides for educators that focus on the regional chapters of the Assessment Report, helping to unpack the key messages of each region and point to related, high-quality online resources.

National Geographic Classroom Resources

Bring National Geographic to your classroom through lesson plans, maps, and reference resources.

NXTerra - University of Californai and Californai State University

UC-CSU NXTerra is a resource for college teachers from across all disciplines and anyone seeking to enhance their teaching and learning about the climate crisis, critical sustainability, and climate justice studies, both inside and outside the classroom.

Our Climate Our Future - a project of Alliance for a Climate Education

Our Climate Our Future is an award-winning video experience that educates young people on the science of climate change and empowers them to take action.

Practical Action

Our FREE STEM, science, design and technology resources focus on global issues including climate change, energy, food security and the Sustainable Development Goals. Popular in primary and secondary schools, they include teacher guides, pupil worksheets, PowerPoints, posters, images, videos, games and careers materials all set within a global context. Check out our popular STEM challenges. Perfect for ages 7-14. they encourage pupils to come up with their own ingenious solutions to a global problem. Designed to fit the UK curriculum, and accredited for CREST Awards they are popular for off timetable days, STEM clubs and transition.

Resources4Rethinking

Welcome to Resources for Rethinking. R4R.ca provides immediate access to more than 1000 quality classroom resources. Developed by Learning for a Sustainable Future, R4R.ca connects teachers to lesson plans, books, videos and other materials that explore the environmental, social and economic dimensions of important issues and events unfolding in our world today. R4R resources have been reviewed by experienced classroom teachers and matched to relevant curriculum outcomes for each province and territory. Use the search engine to find resources and read the reviews. Most of these materials can be downloaded immediately.

Stanford Earth - Climate Change Education

Climate scientists and education specialists collaborated to develop a curriculum for middle and high school science classrooms. It addresses the fundamental issues of climate science, the impacts of climate change on society and on global resources, mitigation, and adaptation strategies.

Sustainable Schools, Sustainable Futures

This is a practical book for teachers working at Key Stage 2/3 (Second and Third Levels in Scotland) Part 1, Learning for Tomorrow, sets out the major dilemmas faced by society in the 21st century and the need to work towards a more sustainable future. Part 2, Stories from the Future, explores eight different aspects of a more sustainable future. For each there is a visual scenario for 2050 with accompanying activities. Part 3, A Journey of Hope, shows how these themes are inextricably interrelated and how, when woven together, they can help create a more resilient and sustainable future. It then sets out ways in which it is possible to teach in a spirit of optimism and hope that will empower young people to be active citizens in the years ahead.

Sustainable Development Solutions Network - A global Initiative for the United Nations

The SDG Academy is SDSN's flagship education initiative. We bring together the world’s experts to create and deliver educational content on critical issues for the future of people and planet, including health, education, climate change, agriculture and food systems, and sustainable investment.

Teacher's Climate Guide

Teacher's climate guide is an education package for subject teachers. It explains climate change in the context of each school subject and it provides exercises and visual materials.

Thoughtbox Climate Resources

Students will understand the impact of climate change on both human and non-human communities and engage with the values and emotions that we are all experiencing, helping move from anxiety to empowerment and inspiring positive actions moving forward.Students will practise skills of critical thinking & questioning, deep listening and empathy building by engaging in a wide range of discussion ideas, learning stimulus and creative exercises. Good for ages 5-11

TROP ICSU/ available in several languages

We collate and curate digital/ICT-based teaching resources that integrate climate studies across the curriculum of Science, Mathematics, Social Sciences and Humanities. These teaching resources are locally rooted in their context, but globally relevant for their science. For high school and undergraduates.

United Nations Climate Change (UNCC) e-learn

The One UN Climate Change Learning Partnership (UN CC:Learn) is a joint initiative of more than 30 multilateral organizations helping countries to achieve climate change action both through general climate literacy and applied skills development. UN CC:Learn provides strategic advice and quality learning resources to help people, governments and businesses to understand, adapt, and build resilience to climate change, The UN CC:Learn knowledge-sharing platform provides a ‘one-stop-shop’ for accessing climate change learning resources and services offered by the UN system.

Window to the Universe - Our Changing Planet, National Earth Science Teachers Association

When we look around us, we can see that our planet's climate is changing rapidly. The National Earth Science Teachers Association and Windows to the Universe are working together with NBC Learn and the National Science Foundation to explore the impact that climate change is having on our planet. The resources below provide links to videos developed by NBC Learn on twelve key indicators of climate change, as well as lesson plans for teachers to use to explore the science behind these indicators with their students at the secondary level

World Wildlife Federation

Our engaging classroom resources have been designed for both primary and secondary schools. By learning more about the science and geography that affects our world, and the decision makers and organisations who have the power to champion change, we want young people to embark on a personal journey with WWF to understand what needs to be done, to recognise what matters most to them and to take action to help protect the places, animals and things they love.

YEARS of Living Dangerously , National Wildlife Federation's (@NWF) Climate Classroom

The YEARS education materials are aligned to national standards for education and correlate with the K-12 Common Core State Standards. Importantly, these instructional materials will advance – now and in the future – newly developed Next Generation Science Standards that feature climate education as a goal for most schools over the next three to five years. You will find two sets of alignment: 1) the content of each episode is correlated to the standards; and 2) the lesson plans are aligned to the standards in detail.

The Years of Living Dangerously (YEARS) lessons plans and resources correspond to the science and issues presented in the series, encourage students to analyze the relevance of climate change to their daily lives, and investigate how they can be part of the solution. Instruction on climate change provides ample opportunity for interdisciplinary teaching. Writing and service learning projects are provided to connect science to language arts and life skills.

Young Voices for the Planet (with Eco-Schools)

Youth civic action nonprofit lead by Lynne Cherry developed a curriculum based on films about the subject matter. Curriculum is now distributed by 60+ (and counting) PBS stations; Young Voices for the Planet is also being incorporated with Climate Classroom Kids' NWF curriculum.