Climate: A Balancing Act

Positives

• The lesson covers the topic of Earth's radiation balance through text, visualizations, and checkpoints for understanding.

• Students will explore other planets' characteristics and conditions and compare them to Earth.

Additional Prerequisites

• Students should have a basic understanding of chemistry and physics concepts such as electromagnetic radiation, infrared radiation, and surface temperature.
• This is part 4 of 9 in Explaining Climate Change, a series of lessons from The King's Centre for Visualization in Science.

Differentiation

• Teachers should pay attention to the pace at which they assign the 5 key idea sections. Teachers may want to assign one key idea section at a time and check for understanding before proceeding to the next one.
• The reading level for these slides is upper high school to college level, so teachers may want to employ reading scaffolds, such as graphic organizers, for students.

• Teachers may want to check for students' understanding of physics concepts first and then support their scientific vocabulary acquisition for new terms such as albedo, radiation balance, particulate matter, etc.