This lesson guides students to connect the PBS Adaptation video series on climate adaptation to their own community. Students describe their community, identify climate impacts faced by their community, research how their community is adapting to those impacts, and then create a digital story about what they found.

This interactive lets students determine the extent of average temperature change both in their community and anywhere else in the world, relative to average temperatures for the three decades between 1951 and 1980.

SYNOPSIS: In this lesson, students discover, share, and evaluate what young people around the globe are doing to address climate change and utilize this information as the basis for a portrait.

SCIENTIST NOTES: This lesson plan includes information about youth climate activists and their motivation and actions for addressing climate change around the world. The video is short, focuses on the activists' individual motivation behind taking climate action, and introduces the idea of climate justice. The information presented in the provided articles links to information and other news articles where needed. The profiles on the climate activists may get outdated over time but are still useful for the lesson. This resource is recommended for teaching.

POSITIVES:
-Students are introduced to a diverse range of global youth climate leaders.
-Students learn that climate activism includes environmental justice.
-Students begin to identify ways that they, as young people, have agency in the fight against climate change and climate inequities.
-Students learn how to use a global issue as the source of their subsequent artwork.

ADDITIONAL PREREQUISITES:
-This is lesson 2 of 3 in our 9th-12th grade Climate Heroes unit.
-This lesson should follow a basic introduction to climate change science, exploration of global and local impacts, and climate change solutions.
-Students should know how to access and navigate Padlet.
-Students should know how to work on Google Slides or a similar format.

DIFFERENTIATION:
-Students can complete the projects individually or in groups.
-The Padlet exploration can be done as a whole class or as independent work. For students who need support working independently, teachers can assign them three youth activists to explore.
-If students have trouble selecting one activist, they can pick the person who is closest in age to them.
-Students can choose to go outside of the Padlet for information, but they should use the C.R.A.A.P. test for determining the validity of their source. A video explaining the test is linked in the Padlet.

SYNOPSIS: In this lesson, students create portraits of youth climate heroes.

SCIENTIST NOTES: The content of this lesson plan focuses on artistic techniques and uses climate activists as the inspiration. The activists’ stories and the video featured are accurate. Resources and the bulk of science information come from previous lesson plans in this series. This is recommended for teaching.

POSITIVES:
-Students will experience using real-world problems as the sources of their art-making.
-Students will use their art to impact others through education, influence, and inspiration.
-This lesson provides numerous choice-based approaches, from the content of the artwork, to the media used, to the composition and presentation of the work.

ADDITIONAL PREREQUISITES:
-This is lesson 3 of 3 in our 9th-12th grade Climate Heroes unit.
-Basic knowledge of drawing/painting art materials is required (such as pencil, colored pencil, pen, watercolor, acrylic, etc.). This lesson should only be attempted after students have some basic media familiarity.
-Basic understanding of elements of art/principles of design, composition, and use of thumbnails should be established prior to this lesson.
-Students should have some prior experience drawing facial features such as eyes, nose, mouth, etc.

DIFFERENTIATION:
-The timing of the lesson can be altered according to teacher preference.
-The Investigate section offers various supports for students about different art techniques. Teachers can eliminate or add to this depending on student ability.
-The Investigate section includes an advanced study of portrait composition that is 52 minutes long. It is sectioned into chapters, so teachers can select which clips are most relevant for their class.
-If students are overwhelmed with choice, teachers can assign a specific type of art media.

An important need in climate education is to include youth voices in the planning and development of climate science education programs across Washington. EarthGen’s Youth Fellowship hosts a small group of high school students in service to this need.  Fellows complete approximately 50 hours of training, research, and implementation over the course of the school year. In the first part of their fellowship, youth receive approximately 20 hours of training about climate change and climate justice in asynchronous and synchronous formats. During the second part of their fellowship, the youth develop a research question and collect data on what students across Washington would like to see included in climate science education. Data collection includes focus groups, interviews, and surveys. At the culmination of the experience, Youth Fellows analyze their findings and share their results in a creative format. Each youth has an adult sponsor to support their work and are awarded a stipend.  

The world’s youth will have a significant role to play if we are to bring about the widespread behavioural change needed to shift towards more sustainable lifestyles and consumption habits. It is important for young people to understand that behind over-consumption lies increased exploitation of resources, rising poverty, widening inequalities and persistent conflicts, all of which will worsen with climate change and eventually will minimize their opportunities for a better and sustainable future. The poorest of the poor, those who cannot consume enough to meet their basic needs, are the worst hit by climate change. Most of these are young people under 24, who make up nearly half of the world’s population, with most living in developing countries.

Students and community residents of four remote Alaskan villages measure environmental data to identify their climate vulnerabilities.

Reduction of energy consumption of buildings is an important step in the move towards a sustainable economy. How can buildings be made net zero energy, in different climates?

This course introduces you to zero energy design. It will teach you a stepped approach to design a zero energy climate concept for existing buildings: homes, schools, offices, shops etc. It will demonstrate how an integrated approach, which takes into account both passive measures (such as thermal insulation and sun shading) and active measures (such as heat pumps and photovoltaic panels), can deliver the best results.

It will do so by providing you with an overview of possible measures, and through reviewing several case studies of zero energy buildings in the Netherlands, with lessons for other climates as well. Thus, you will learn which measures are most suitable for individual buildings under local climate conditions.

This course is for anyone interested in making buildings more energy efficient, who already possess basic technical knowledge.

Students investigate passive solar building design with a focus on heating. Insulation, window placement, thermal mass, surface colors, and site orientation are addressed in the background materials and design preparation. Students test their projects for thermal gains and losses during a simulated day and night then compare designs with other teams for suggestions for improvements.

This activity is a research project in which students explore and synthesize key paleoceanographic evidence for the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) as found in marine sediment cores collected and analyzed during Ocean Drilling Program Leg 208 (Walvis Ridge).

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Coral reefs are especially sensitive to environmental changes, which is evident from mass “bleaching” events, where corals expel the microalgae living in their cells. Reefs have suffered during both climate change and oil contamination, and chemical remediation efforts can harm corals further. A recent study sought to evaluate the impacts of oil contamination and find potential alternatives to chemical dispersants. Using a mesocosm experiment with the fire coral Millepora alcicornis, which is sensitive to environmental changes, researchers constructed a realistic oil-spill scenario and compared the effects of a chemical dispersant, Corexit 9500, to those of bioremediators. They found that bioremediators – bacteria, filamentous fungi, and yeast – helped to mitigate the effects of the oil and maintain the integrity of the coral. In contrast, the chemical dispersant negatively affected host physiology and altered the coral-associated microbial community..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This is the first teacher's guide book of the collection “The climate in our hands”, a series of volumes on the topic of climate change. The aim of this guide book is to support teachers in carrying out a range of activities on climate change and the ocean and cryosphere in their classrooms, and targets students from the upper end of primary school to the end of lower-secondary school (ages 9 to 15).

Le cours permet de connaitre la trame climatique du globe et caractériser le climat d’une zone à travers divers outils

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Investments in renewable energy are a powerful way to fight climate change Except when they come at the cost of human lives That’s the reality currently faced by the indigenous people of Oaxaca, Mexico In arguably the richest land for harvesting wind energy in all of Latin America government and investors foresee a promising solution to climate change and a source of new jobs But their approach is proving problematic to the way of life of the native Zapotecas and Ikoots who have had to sacrifice their land, their livelihood, and even their lives to backers of wind energy projects It’s what researcher Jacobo Ramirez calls a worrying case of social turbulence where Mexico’s unpredictable political and social systems has created a situation in which laws and regulations protecting environmental justice are not observed Until government and business can learn to include collective indigenous interests in their plans environmental injustice will continue to prevail.."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This article provides an overview of ePals, a database that connects K12 teachers and classrooms around the world for pen pals and collaborative projects.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Although lakes cover less than 1% of the Earth’s surface, they are an essential component in the planet’s carbon cycle. But there are striking regional differences in the degree of carbon cycling that occurs in lakes, and the underlying causes aren’t well known. To improve understanding of these differences, an international research team has proposed a geographic framework to connect carbon processing at the ecosystem level with regional drivers such as climate, land cover, and human activity. Based on this framework, they’ve described two mechanisms that explain geographic differences in carbon cycling, providing new insight into the role of inland waters in the broader global carbon cycle. The first mechanism proposes that regional differences in lake carbon cycling are linked to whether water color exceeds a threshold level. Where these levels fall in relation to this threshold affects ecosystem patterns, such as lake metabolic status..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.