Climate Change Learning Across Content Areas
Overview
This resource is a hub for information about teaching climate change across grade levels and content areas.
Resouces
While the science standards that specifically call out the term “climate change” are found in middle and high school science, climate learning can be integrated into every classroom, K-12, no matter the content area.
Science and non-science classes should integrate climate learning in a rich and rigorous way by anchoring instruction around a climate issue(s) that is locally relevant to the students in their classrooms. Shifting instruction to do this takes careful planning to ensure age-appropriate climate change-related material and consideration of students' social and emotional learning needs. Some locally relevant community concerns may be increased wildfire activity and the associated smoke, changing agriculture needs due to droughts and temperature changes, changes in ecosystems due to invasive species or extinction, etc.
2024 Climate Literacy Guide
- The 2024 Climate Literacy Guide contains eight Essential Principles for understanding and addressing climate change.
What Can Non-Science Educators Use? Art, Math, ELA, and Social Studies Classroom Resources from CLEAN
- While there are no complete curriculums or even units for non-science classrooms, there are vetted resources tagged for Art, Math, ELA, and Social Studies at CLEAN (found in the right-side navigation). These resources can inspire the incorporation of bigger climate ideas into instruction, which should be more than just a single, one-time lesson introducing students to climate change.
What Could Climate Integration Look Like? Interdisciplinary Models for Climate Science Integration
- There is not one “right” way to incorporate climate. It should be done in a way that is locally relevant to students’ lives. The following are examples of sample bundles of Washington State Learning Standards from multiple content areas that teachers can use to center their classroom instruction around climate change and climate science.
How Do I Plan for Climate Integration? Climate Science Integration Resources
- These resources support K-12 teachers of all content areas to integrate climate science and climate change into their instruction. There are tools for individual educators and teams of educators to work together to plan their instruction around the Guiding Principle for Informed Climate Decisions.
- These resources are from the 2023 and 2024 Washington State Climate Education Summit.
- In 2023, sessions on integration were done in breakout rooms by grade bands. The following links to the resources shared.
- In 2024, there was a "Climate Integration 102" session for return attendees who wanted to learn more about what "integration" looks like in K-12. The following links the folder for that session.
Title Image by L. Henrickson at the 2024 Washington State Climate Education Summit in Spokane, WA.