In this activity, student teams research and develop a proposal to decrease the carbon footprint of their city's/town's public transportation system and then prepare a report that explains why their transportation plan is the best for their community.

I designed this activity as a role-playing game to help students understand both the concept of climate modeling and how the climate system works. Students take on the role of a climate system component, examining their personal reactions to climate stimuli and building a future scenario based on their group's reactions. You can implement this teaching collection as part of the Climate of Change InTeGrate Module, Unit 5, or as a stand-alone activity.

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In this activity, students consider how several communities are adapting to climate change-related problems including drought's impacts on agriculture, loss of assets due to climate-related hazards, freshwater availability, and extreme heat waves. They will read brief case studies about agro-forestry, insurance strategies, the "Room for the River" program in the Netherlands, water storage from retreating glaciers, and city planning for heat waves. Based on these examples and knowledge of their own community, they will suggest possible adaptation strategies that will be most beneficial to their area.

(Note: this resource was added to OER Commons as part of a batch upload of over 2,200 records. If you notice an issue with the quality of the metadata, please let us know by using the 'report' button and we will flag it for consideration.)

This video lesson aims to motivate students about chemistry and to raise their awareness about how chemistry helps in solving certain environmental problems. In this lesson, the air pollution problem created by cars and other vehicles is presented. The lesson will highlight causes of this problem, harmful products from it and possible solutions. There will also be discussion of ways to convert the pollutants produced by burning oil in vehicles into more friendly products.

This game is an expansion on the popular board game Catan, it adapts the regular Catan game to become a game about sustainability and climate change. It's a neat idea, but teachers must already own the game and know how to play it.

This game-based learning would be great for after-school activities, environmental clubs, or a 'free' period in school. The amount of setup needed to get the game going and explain the rules may be too involved for regular classroom use.

SYNOPSIS: This lesson builds on students’ understanding of the cardiorespiratory system, showcases how climate change impacts cardiorespiratory health, and concludes with students exploring ways they can expand their actionable responses to climate change.

SCIENTIST NOTES: This lesson teaches students about what is in the air we breathe, how trees are important to keeping the air clean, air pollution, and how to solve some of the big global problems. Links to local New Jersey organizations are provided. The TedEd video also links to more resources about air pollution. This lesson also includes some movement and a game to help students visualize how pollutants can be removed for the air. The videos contain accurate and thought-provoking information. This resource is recommended for teaching.

POSITIVES:
-This lesson incorporates play and fun into learning about air quality and how it relates to the cardiorespiratory system.
-Students will draw direct connections between health and climate.

ADDITIONAL PREREQUISITES:
-Teachers should have access to a play space large enough to accommodate the “Catch Your Breath Game."
-Teachers should have access to balls or objects that students can throw or catch.
-Teachers should be familiar with facilitating a Socratic seminar style discussion.

DIFFERENTIATION:
-Students can write an analysis on why they think the game is called “Catch Your Breath.”
-Teachers can assign the groups to strategically place students who need support in certain areas with students who can provide that support.
-Teachers can print out the cardiorespiratory system diagram for students who would benefit from a hard copy.
-Other resources related to this lesson include this video about a nonprofit detecting deforestation and this resource to determine the tree equity score of your city or neighborhood.

Students model the effect of greenhouse gases on Earth's atmosphere. They find that greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide and methane, are uniquely shaped to catch and pass on infrared radiation, and so they are responsible for the warmth we enjoy on Earth. The children discuss how the addition of greenhouse gases by human activities leads to further warming and what steps we can take to slow it.

Children get to know each other through an icebreaker activity that introduces the importance of water on Earth.

This interactive resource adapted from the National Park Service presents the key concepts of cave and karst systems, including how and where they form, different types, and various cave environments.

Student Atlas of Oregon in English and Spanish
Atlas of Oregon Climate and Climate Change

This activity engages learners in exploring the impact of climate change on arctic sea ice in the Bering Sea. They graph and analyze sea ice extent data, conduct a lab on thermal expansion of water, and then observe how a scientist collects long-term data on a bird population.

With this game, students explore the connection between climate, genetic variation and the transmission of hantavirus. A board and game pieces are provided. The resource is supported by teacher background information, assessments, and a scoring rubric. This is Activity 1 of the learning module, Human Health, Climate and Disease: A Critical Connection, part of the lesson series, Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change.

Developed by a team of scientists from two national laboratories, education researchers, gamers, and a professional game developer, Challenge and Persuade is a highly social, fast-paced, fun-to-play card game in which players compete in applying skills in argumentation. Through game play, players come to understand the many manifestations of how the extreme amplification of the human population, exploding worldwide demand for energy, increasing exploitation of water resources, and alteration of the planet's climateâare tightly intertwined at the nexus of energy, water, and climate; one cannot be considered in isolation from the other two. Development was supported by the National Science Foundation.

Students run a simplified computer model to explore how climate conditions can affect caribou, the most abundant grazing animal in the Arctic.

This animation illustrates how the hardiness zones for plants have changed between 1990 and 2006 based data from 5,000 National Climatic Data Center cooperative stations across the continental United States.

In this activity, students research changes to the environment in the Arctic/Bering Sea over time using oral and photographic histories. Developed for Alaska Native students, this activity can be customized for other regions.

This activity requires construction of a simple salinity tester. Students will create their own calibration scale during this experiment, and look at the change in salinity that would arise if freshwater was suddenly dumped into the ocean. Materials needed for this investigation include a DC mill ampere meter, 2 D-cell batteries and holder, bronze sheeting, #18 solid wire, salt, deionized water, and a stream table or pan apparatus to create a hydrologic model of ice-ocean interaction. Included is a student worksheet to guide interpretation of data. The resource is supported by teacher background information, assessment suggestions, and a scoring rubric. This is Activity 3 of the learning module, Water: Here, There, and Everywhere, part of the lesson series, The Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change.

Key figure from the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report that shows changes in global average surface temperature, global average sea level, and Northern Hemisphere snow cover from as far back as 1850.

In this video adapted from the Arctic Athabaskan Council, learn how warmer temperatures in the Arctic are transforming the landscape, triggering a host of effects such as permafrost thawing and insect infestations.

This video looks at the impact of changing climate on animal habitats around the world, showing how different creatures are responding to changing temperatures and precipitation patterns.