In this lesson, students investigate wildfires in Colorado by analyzing wildfire data and information to create a local news story that educates community members about wildfire risk. In Part 1, students watch and discuss a short documentary about wildfires. In Part 2, students analyze wildfire data to build understanding of the causes, impacts, locations, and frequency of wildfires. In Part 3, students create a local news story for their community.

In this interactive game, students solve challenges that their community faces during the course of an extreme drought event by using available individual and community resources. Students work in three resilience teams to determine the strategies that they will invest in as a community as the drought situation evolves.

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

SYNOPSIS: This lesson teaches students about the different ways farms and agriculture are being impacted by climate change.

SCIENTIST NOTES: This lesson allows students to explore the impact of climate change on agriculture. They would be able to identify the underlying climatic variables that affect farming systems in different geographies. All resources were fact-checked, and this lesson has passed the science credibility process.

POSITIVES:
-Students are able to learn about specific climate change topics that are interesting to them.
-Students can learn about the many different ways in which climate change impacts agriculture.
-Students can learn from their peers.

ADDITIONAL PREREQUISITES:
-This is lesson 3 of 6 in our 6th-8th grade Climate Change, Food Production, and Food Security unit.
-While not necessary, it is helpful for students to have a general sense of some of the global impacts of climate change.
-You must create a free account to access the Newsela article.

DIFFERENTIATION:
-Teachers can assign the Teacher Slideshow on Google Classroom and students can submit their work independently.
-Teachers can group students for the guided research section and assign them level-appropriate resources.
-Teachers can eliminate options in the guided research section if the options are overwhelming.
-Teachers can eliminate the video option in the guided research if they want to exclusively assign readings.
-Teachers can review the teacher slideshow as a class and answer the questions as a whole group assignment.

SYNOPSIS: This lesson teaches students about the different steps in food production and how each step contributes to climate change.

SCIENTIST NOTES: The lesson has students analyze carbon footprint from different sources of food. From production, packaging, transportation, consumption, and disposal, all these activities increase carbon footprint and cause harm to the environment. This lesson inspires students to take urgent action to reduce individual carbon footprint from the food system. All materials are well-sourced and were thoroughly fact-checked to ascertain their credibility. Thus, this lesson is recommended for teaching.

POSITIVES:
-Students are able to connect climate change to their everyday life by thinking about what foods they eat and how they may impact the planet.
-Students are able to analyze complex data in a way that is highly scaffolded and supported.

ADDITIONAL PREREQUISITES:
-This is lesson 2 of 6 in our 6th-8th grade Climate Change, Food Production, and Food Security unit.
-Students should be able to read a bar graph that has a key.

DIFFERENTIATION:
-Teachers can assign the Teacher Slideshow on Google Classroom and students can submit their work independently.
-For the Data Explorer section, teachers can use an open-ended version that has broad questions or a guided version that has more specific questions to help students identify trends.
-Teachers can eliminate options in the guided research section if the options are overwhelming.
-Teachers can review the Teacher Slideshow as a class and answer the questions as a whole group assignment.

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.

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.

This video features Katharine Hayhoe presenting a lively discussion of impacts that the Midwestern US is experiencing due to climate change. It steps through evidence for how climate change is affecting agriculture, tourism, drought and flood, water cycles and freshwater availability, the spread of invasive species and disease, as well as other topics.

This audio slideshow examines the changes in the ecosystem that will occur to the Arctic due to increasing temperatures and disappearing sea ice.

This is a five-activity module that explores the evidence for and impacts of melting glacial ice, with resources from major institutions and scientists who study glaciers -- primarily in Arctic areas. The suite of activities includes both glaciers and melting ice, as well as the impact of melt water downstream. Each activity follows the 5E model of Engagement, Exploration, Explanation, Elaboration, and Evaluation.

This activity relates water temperature to fishery health within inland freshwater watersheds as a way to explore how environmental factors of an ecosystem affect the organisms that use those ecosystems as important habitat.

This video features changes in the land, sea, and animals that are being observed by the residents of Sachs Harbour, Northwest Territories, Canada â many of whom hunt, trap, and fishâbecause of their long-standing and intimate connection with their ecosystem. Scientists interview the residents and record their observations in order to deepen our understanding of climate change in the polar region. Background essay and discussion questions are included.

In this lab activity, students use brine shrimp as a proxy for krill to study how environmental factors impact behavioral responses of krill in the unique environment of Antarctica.

This is a sequence of 5 classroom activities focusing on the El NiÃo climate variability. The activities increase in complexity and student-directedness. The focus of the activities is on accessing and manipulating real data to help students understand El NiÃo as an interaction of Earth systems.

This short video illustrates how warming ocean temperature is a major factor in climate change, particularly the increase in severity of extreme weather (notably storms and drought).

Students create a model of sea level rise based on the melting of land ice, sea ice, or grounded ice. Student predictions are recorded and models are run. Making explanations based on data, cause and effect, and asking questions are emphasized in this activity.

This activity allows students to examine graphs of sea level rise data as well as global temperature data. They calculate amounts and rates of sea level rise for various time periods and answer questions discussing the data. They then compare the sea level rise trends to those in a graph of temperature data.

This is a classroom activity about the forcing mechanisms for the most recent cold period: the Little Ice Age (1350-1850). Students receive data about tree ring records, solar activity, and volcanic eruptions during this time period. By comparing and contrasting time intervals when tree growth was at a minimum, solar activity was low, and major volcanic eruptions occurred, they draw conclusions about possible natural causes of climate change and identify factors that may indicate climate change.

In this video segment adapted from the Alaska Native Heritage Center, discover the connections between Alaska Native subsistence culture and the natural cycle of the seasons.

This video highlights specific climate change-related phenomena that are threatening the flora and fauna of Yellowstone National Park.