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Author

Paleontological Research Institution

Grades

6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th

Subjects

Science, Biology, Earth and Space Sciences

Resource Types

  • Interactive Media
  • Presentation Slides

Regional Focus

Global, North America, United States

Changing Climate: Our Future, Our Choice

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Synopsis
  • This online museum exhibit uses text, photographs, interactive 3-D models, virtual reality capability, interactive maps, timelines, presentations, infographics, and animations to teach students about climate change.
  • Students can work their way through sections on climate history, climate proxies, the greenhouse effect, climate impacts, and climate solutions.
Teaching Tips

Positives

  • This online exhibit is engaging and well-designed.
  • The exhibit is accessible for students who do not know much about climate change, but also detailed enough to appeal to students who have a broad knowledge of the subject.

Additional Prerequisites

  • Teachers should be aware that the Share section allows students to submit a response about what climate change means to them, along with their first and last name. Students under 13 years old must supply a guardian's email address to submit a response.

Differentiation

  • This resource is well suited for self-paced learning. Using their own devices, students can work their way through each section and then write a short paragraph about something in the exhibit that they already knew about and something they learned from the exhibit.
  • Science teachers could use each of the sections individually to teach about a specific topic (e.g., climate proxies, the greenhouse effect). 
  • Other resources on this topic include this interactive textbook lesson on climate history, this lesson on the basics of Earth's climate and atmosphere, and this video on climate solutions
Scientist Notes
The resource introduces students to climate change and how humans have accelerated the change, causing extreme conditions for organisms, the environment, and natural habitats. This is recommended for teaching.
Standards
  • Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)
    • ESS2: Earth's Systems
      • HS-ESS2-2 Analyze geoscience data to make the claim that one change to Earth’s surface can create feedbacks that cause changes to other Earth systems.
      • HS-ESS2-4 Use a model to describe how variations in the flow of energy into and out of Earth’s systems result in changes in climate.
    • ESS3: Earth and Human Activity
      • MS-ESS3-2 Analyze and interpret data on natural hazards to forecast future catastrophic events and inform the development of technologies to mitigate their effects.
      • MS-ESS3-4 Construct an argument supported by evidence for how increases in human population and per-capita consumption of natural resources impact Earth's systems.
      • MS-ESS3-5 Ask questions to clarify evidence of the factors that have caused the rise in global temperatures over the past century.
      • HS-ESS3-5 Analyze geoscience data and the results from global climate models to make an evidence-based forecast of the current rate of global or regional climate change and associated future impacts to Earth systems.
    • LS2: Ecosystems: Interactions, Energy, and Dynamics
      • HS-LS2-6 Evaluate the claims, evidence, and reasoning that the complex interactions in ecosystems maintain relatively consistent numbers and types of organisms in stable conditions, but changing conditions may result in a new ecosystem.
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