In this design challenge lesson students explore the Denver Public School District’s solid waste plan and discuss how their school can save or decrease emissions by reducing solid waste at our school.

This lesson provides guidance for students to create and practice a presentation about design challenge results that they developed in the previous unit lessons and how to present it to the school administration.

In this activity students utilize collected data and propose solutions to mitigate food waste in their school.

This lesson outlines for students how to design and carry out an investigation to audit their school’s food waste system.

This animated video discusses how climate change is altering the environment and increasing disease risk from air pollution, spread of disease vectors, increased high temperatures, violent storms and flooding. Ideas for community preparedness are offered.

This animated video explains how the molecular structure of atmospheric gases can absorb and re-radiate infrared energy. The video uses simple models and analogies to aid in student understanding.

Students explore the greenhouse effect in this lesson using a computer simulation and develop a model for how it works.

In this video, a PhD Student from the University of Maine explains how ice cores are used to study global climate change.

This is a kinesthetic activity that demonstrates how shortwave radiation emitted by the sun and longwave thermal radiation emitted by the earth interact differently in the atmosphere. It allows students to experience this difference and reinforces their understanding of greenhouse gases as well. Students should have an understanding of shortwave and longwave thermal radiation and of greenhouse gases before doing this activity, but there is a minimal amount of background information about those topics included in this pdf. Additional resources/background info for teachers can be found on the website for the Little Shop of Physics.

This short video from Climate Central explains the technology used to monitor changes in Arctic sea ice. Long-term tracking (since the late 1970's) shows Arctic sea ice has been on a steady decline and this could have significant implications for global temperatures.

Students investigate how sea levels might rise when ice sheets and ice caps melt. By constructing a pair of models, students can observe the effects of ice melt in two different situations.

In this design challenge lesson, students examine their school food system and develop an investigation about food waste in order to know what should change.

This video succinctly explains the mechanism of the natural greenhouse effect and the cause of global climate change (anthropogenic global warming). It is short, basic, and to the point. It's also available in 12 languages!

This activity leads students through a sequence of learning steps that highlight the embedded energy that is necessary to produce various types of food. Students start by thinking through the components of a basic meal and are later asked to review the necessary energy to produce different types of protein.

This short video, is the fifth in the National Academies Climate Change, Lines of Evidence series. It focuses on greenhouse gases, climate forcing (natural and human-caused), and global energy balance.

In this activity, students use Google Earth and team up with fictional students in Chersky, Russia to investigate possible causes of thawing permafrost in Siberia and other Arctic regions. Students explore the nature of permafrost and what the effects of thawing permafrost mean both locally and globally. Next, students use a spreadsheet to explore soil temperature data from permafrost boreholes and surface air temperature datasets from in and around the Chersky region for a 50-year time span.

SYNOPSIS: This lesson plan connects intergenerational justice with the federal budget.

SCIENTIST NOTES: This lesson asks students to analyze how the U.S. federal government splits its budget amongst all of the federal agencies. The website used to track the spending is routinely updated. This lesson has passed the scientist quality assessment.

POSITIVES:
-This is a powerful lesson connecting past, present, and future.
-Students can have agency as to which group they'd like to represent: the present or the future.

ADDITIONAL PREREQUISITES:
-The top 40 of 102 agencies by spending are included in the spreadsheet. The total (estimated) spending by all 40 of these agencies is $2,960,050,000,000.
-The numbers presented at usaspending.gov are pretty messy. The attached spreadsheet rounds to cleaner numbers.
-The numbers in red are rounded to the nearest billion.
-The numbers in orange are rounded to the nearest hundred million.
-The numbers in blue are rounded to the nearest fifty million.
-Students may be missing some background knowledge. Be prepared to answer questions and/or do some research along with them.
-For example, some students might not know the function of the Department of the Interior.
-Feel free to use this site to look up the function of the major federal agencies. These are one-sentence explanations.
-Feel free to also use this site from the White House where the major agencies (e.g., Agriculture, Defense) are outlined in one large paragraph.
-Note that one “agency” is simply called “unreported data.” That data is not made public. Students can simply leave that $8 billion alone.

DIFFERENTIATION:
-Students will most likely not finish. This is not really a “finishable” activity. The main goal of this activity is for students to figure out the best way to allocate money to the major federal agencies.
-It is not really worth it to discuss the really small expenditures like the Administrative Conference of the U.S.
-Students can wear armbands or robes to show that they are representing the future. Some physical representation of their role is a very powerful reminder of who they represent.

This video segment adapted from KET's Where the River Bends demonstrates how climate change and glacier movement during the Ice Ages destroyed the old Teays River and created the Ohio River, Kentucky's northern border.

As the Atlantic Ocean warms, many marine species—including commercially important fish stocks—are moving further north along the Northeast United States. As a consequence, fishing boats based in traditional ports need to travel further to catch the same fish, or change their strategy to pursue different species of fish. In turn, businesses that serve fishing communities may need to purchase new equipment, develop new practices, or encourage workers to gain new skills. In order for fisheries and the businesses that depend on them to prepare for such changes, fisheries managers need tools to identify which fishery resources may be most vulnerable to our changing climate.

Find out what people and organisations all over the world are doing to adapt to or mitigate climate change.