This activity book and educator's guide provides students with a plethora of classroom and outdoor activities about climate change and climate resilience, focusing on solutions and awareness.
The educator guide provides descriptions, goals, and links to additional supporting materials, and students can earn badges as they complete tasks in the book.
Teaching Tips
Positives
This activity book is a fun and interesting way to get students thinking about climate change and climate resiliency.
Students will benefit from the curricular connections that span several subjects and will especially enjoy the badges that can be earned from completing each activity.
Additional Prerequisites
Students should have a prior understanding of climate change or global warming.
The digital workbook pages should be printed out for students ahead of time.
Differentiation
This resource would work well in a science, language arts, or social studies class.
Lower elementary students may benefit from completing the reading together, while upper elementary and middle school students should be able to complete the activity book independently.
One fun way to implement this resource would be to use each activity as a station for students to visit around your classroom.
If you print each student their own activity book, this resource could work as something students work on at their own pace when they are done with other assignments or need a break.
As an extension, you could combine all of the articles students created into a class newspaper.
Scientist Notes
This resource from NOAA is an activity book filled with tools to help students understand climate resilience and environmental justice concerns in their community. The activity book starts with the familiar, a crossword puzzle, and then slowly guides students to do more independent research and exploration, leading all the way up to actions that students can take to make a difference. The environmental justice activity exposes students to journalism and tasks them with creating their own headline and short article. Along the way, students can earn badges for each activity and a community resilience coloring page is linked on the main page. An excellent educators guide is provided and the resource is packed with colorful illustrations and great writing prompts that really force students to think deeply about resilience and environmental justice in their community. This resource is recommended for teaching.
Standards
Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)
ESS2: Earth's Systems
3-ESS2-1 Represent data in tables and graphical displays to describe typical weather conditions expected during a particular season.
ESS3: Earth and Human Activity
MS-ESS3-5 Ask questions to clarify evidence of the factors that have caused the rise in global temperatures over the past century.
3-ESS3-1 Make a claim about the merit of a design solution that reduces the impacts of a weather-related hazard.
4-ESS3-2 Generate and compare multiple solutions to reduce the impacts of natural Earth processes on humans.
5-ESS3-1 Obtain and combine information about ways individual communities use science ideas to protect the Earth’s resources and environment.
Common Core English Language Arts Standards (CCSS.ELA)
Language (K-12)
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.4.3 Use knowledge of language and its conventions when writing, speaking, reading, or listening.
Reading: Informational Text (K-12)
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.5.4 Determine the meaning of general academic and domain-specific words and phrases in a text relevant to a grade 5 topic or subject area.
Writing (K-12)
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.6.2 Write informative/explanatory texts to examine a topic and convey ideas, concepts, and information through the selection, organization, and analysis of relevant content.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.4.2 Write informative/explanatory texts to examine a topic and convey ideas and information clearly.
College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Standards
Dimension 2: Civics
D2.Civ.11.3-5 Compare procedures for making decisions in a variety of settings, including classroom, school, government, and/or society.
D2.Civ.6.3-5 Describe ways in which people benefit from and are challenged by working together, including through government, workplaces, voluntary organizations, and families.
