Teaching Materials

These materials provide a detailed teaching package with the main aims of:
1. Helping students to understand climate change and,
2. Exploring the implications of climate change by studying plants they are familiar with.

The courses feature activities that emphasize the role of scientific protocols using plant phenology in the school’s region using historical weather for their area. Students will learn how to ask and answer questions like:
- What is the difference between weather and climate?
- What plants are native to my area?
- When do they break bud/bloom/produce seeds?
- How does weather affect this over time?
- What is a protocol, why is it made and how is it used? And,
- What can I personally do to help scientists learn about my local climate?

The curricula will teach students how to be active participants – e.g. how to make observations and analyze data they personally collect, as well as from historical weather records. They’ll gain an understanding of how to make inferences based on scientific data and communicate the results of a properly conducted investigation.

Developing the groundwork from the grade 6 student material, the curriculum for older students features group activities, schoolyard/field experiments and role playing games to make the learning fun. In the grade 7 and grade materials students will become comfortable in knowledgeably using terms like ‘albedo’, ‘greenhouse effect’ and ‘urban heat island’. In grade 8 students will learn an expanded vocabulary of scientific terms, be able to draw inferences from their own data, make predictions about climate change consequences and develop an understanding of what they can do to help minimize their own carbon footprint.

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Teaching Materials