This 5-lesson unit focuses on ocean acidification, its causes, and its impacts on marine life while creating, refining, and analyzing artistic expressions on the topic.
Students will interpret climate art by Alisa Singer and create personal works inspired by what they learn.
Teaching Tips
Positives
The unit embraces the students' artistic expression and leaves room for student choice and voice.
Students are encouraged by the notion that you don't have to be a scientist to engage with data and make a difference.
Additional Prerequisites
The link for the full-size climate-inspired images is broken. However, there are links to each art piece in the presenter's notes.
There are a few links in the presenter notes section of the slides that do not work, including the worksheet link, NNOCCI Climate’s Heart, the creative journal (all three links), "7 things absolutely everyone should know about ocean acidification" (screenshots and PDF), Glow and Grow Protocol, Ocean-Atmosphere Carbon Dioxide Exchange, and Earth Overshoot Day Solutions PDF.
Students should understand the pH scale, chemical notation, and chemical reactions.
Differentiation
Teachers can take the vocabulary listed at the bottom of each Lesson Checkpoints section and create a word wall to support English Language Learners in acquiring the vocabulary.
Students can plan a showcase to display and perform their artwork for others.
Math classes can focus more on the graphs by answering specific questions about data points.
Language arts classes can use the framework to write poetry or other creative pieces that inform and inspire people.
Scientist Notes
This resource allows students to learn about the ocean and its role in regulating heat and sequestrating atmospheric carbon emissions. The resource is recommended for teaching.
Standards
Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)
ESS3.D: Global Climate Change
HS-ESS3-D.2. Through computer simulations and other studies, important discoveries are still being made about how the ocean, the atmosphere, and the biosphere interact and are modified in response to human activities. (HS-ESS3-6)
LS2: Ecosystems: Interactions, Energy, and Dynamics
HS-LS2-2 Use mathematical representations to support and revise explanations based on evidence about factors affecting biodiversity and populations in ecosystems of different scales.
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.
PS1.B: Chemical Reactions
HS-PS1-B.2. In many situations, a dynamic and condition-dependent balance between a reaction and the reverse reaction determines the numbers of all types of molecules present. (HS-PS1-6)
PS1: Matter and its Interactions
HS-PS1-2 Construct and revise an explanation for the outcome of a simple chemical reaction based on the outermost electron states of atoms, trends in the periodic table, and knowledge of the patterns of chemical properties.
Common Core Math Standards (CCSS.MATH)
Statistics & Probability: Interpreting Categorical & Quantitative Data (9-12)
CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.HSS.ID.A.2 Use statistics appropriate to the shape of the data distribution to compare center (median, mean) and spread (interquartile range, standard deviation) of two or more different data sets.
National Core Arts Standards
Visual Arts: Standard 3 - Refine and complete artistic work.
VA:Cr3.1.Ia Apply relevant criteria from traditional and contemporary cultural contexts to examine, reflect on, and plan revisions for works of art and design in progress.
VA:Cr3.1.IIa Engage in constructive critique with peers, then reflect on, re-engage, revise, and refine works of art and design in response to personal artistic vision.
Visual Arts: Standard 7 - Perceive and analyze artistic work.
VA:Re7.2.IIa Evaluate the effectiveness of an image or images to influence ideas, feelings, and behaviors of specific audiences.
Visual Arts: Standard 8 - Interpret intent and meaning in artistic work.
VA:Re8.1.Ia Interpret an artwork or collection of works, supported by relevant and sufficient evidence found in the work and its various contexts.
VA:Re8.1.IIa Identify types of contextual information useful in the process of constructing interpretations of an artwork or collection of works.
