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Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Consumerism Unit

Provided by: Ten Strands |Published on: July 10, 2025

Lesson Plans

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Synopsis

In this 10-lesson Seeds to Solutions unit from Ten Strands and the San Mateo County Office of Education, students will evaluate the impact that consumer goods such as water bottles, electronics, and clothing have on climate change.
Students will discuss the pros and cons of consumer goods, analyze their life cycles, explore related chemical reactions, connect the greenhouse effect to gases from extraction, production, and disposal, assess which goods impact climate change most, examine consumption and production trends since the 1950s, create a model of their climate impact, investigate production issues from an engineering perspective, and implement solutions.

Related Teaching Resources

Subjects: Chemistry, Engineering

Authors: Seeds to Solutions, Ten Strands

Region: California

Languages: English

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Teaching Materials

Positives

Through this unit, students will learn several useful life skills, such as breaking a large problem into sub-problems.
This unit includes multiple elements that help students feel a sense of ownership over the project.

Prerequisites

Students should already be familiar with climate change and have a general idea of how human activities cause it.
It may benefit students to understand chemical reactions before beginning Lesson 3.

Differentiation & Implementation

All teachers, but especially language arts teachers, can use the Text Annotation Key and collaborative reading protocol from Lessons 2 and 6 outside of this unit as an established practice for reading and annotating a text.
If teachers do not have the time, resources, or class set up that is conducive for the stations in Lesson 3, these stations can be performed as demonstrations instead.
To make community connections, teachers can incorporate a community engagement piece into the action plan in Lessons 9 and 10.
In Lesson 10, students can create video presentations or use other methods to communicate their action plans to the group without having to present live.
If possible, teachers can collaborate across subject areas for students' implementation projects. For example, language arts classes can support writing components such as social media posts or emails, and math classes can support data collection and analysis.

Scientist Notes

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Resource Type and Format

About the Partner Provider

Ten Strands

Ten Strands is a California–based nonprofit established in 2012. Their mission is to strengthen the partnerships, strategies, and systems that advance environmental literacy, ensuring all California TK–12 students thrive in sustainable, resilient schools and engage in meaningful environmental learning experiences, both in and beyond the classroom. They operate with a small, diverse, and nimble staff and strategic partners throughout the state. Ten Strands utilizes the largest and most diverse institution in California—the public school system—to impact 58 county offices of education, more than 1,000 school districts, approximately 10,000 individual schools, over 300,000 teachers, and 5.8 million children.

Related Teaching Resources

All resources can be used for your educational purposes with proper attribution to the content provider.