In this lesson, students explore how changing climate conditions and land management practices have impacted the number of megafires in the United States.
Students will read text, watch videos, analyze and interpret maps and graphs, draw diagrams, and construct a model to consolidate their learning.
Teaching Tips
Positives
Students will gain an understanding of how humans interact with and impact the environment.
The lesson highlights Indigenous perspectives and knowledge about wildfire prevention.
The resource includes everything teachers need to use this lesson in the classroom.
Additional Prerequisites
This lesson requires about 120 minutes but this can be split over multiple class periods.
Teachers should print the student worksheet to make it easier for students to draw their diagrams. If this is not possible, the worksheet can be provided digitally and students can use digital drawing tools.
Students should have a basic understanding of climate change and the water cycle.
If you are in an area that has wildfires, be conscious of the experiences and trauma students may have around this topic.
Ads may play before the videos.
Differentiation
Students can share their models with a small group and discuss similarities and differences between them. Alternatively, students can share the models in a gallery walk and discuss them as a class.
The Teacher Guide ends with links to a video, article, and podcast that can be used to extend learning.
Cross-curricular connections can be made with social studies classes when learning about the Indigenous methods of wildfire prevention and with geography classes through reading and interpreting the maps.
Scientist Notes
The resource highlights the impacts of megafires in the US and will allow students to learn about sustainable land management practices under a changing climate. This resource has passed our science review.
Standards
Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)
CCC.Cause and Effect: Mechanism and Prediction: Events have causes, sometimes simple, sometimes multifaceted. Deciphering causal relationships, and the mechanisms by which they are mediated, is a major activity of science and engineering.
MS-CCC-Cause and Effect.1. Cause and effect relationships are routinely identified, tested, and used to explain change.
MS-CCC-Cause and Effect.3. Phenomena may have more than one cause, and some cause and effect relationships in systems can only be described using probability.
CCC.Stability and Change: For both designed and natural systems, conditions that affect stability and factors that control rates of change are critical elements to consider and understand.
MS-CCC-Stability and Change.1. Explanations of stability and change in natural or designed systems can be constructed by examining the changes over time and forces at different scales, including the atomic scale.
ESS3.B: Natural Hazards
MS-ESS3-B. Mapping the history of natural hazards in a region, combined with an understanding of related geologic forces can help forecast the locations and likelihoods of future events. (MS-ESS3-2)
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.
LS2: Ecosystems: Interactions, Energy, and Dynamics
MS-LS2-1 Analyze and interpret data to provide evidence for the effects of resource availability on organisms and populations of organisms in an ecosystem.
Common Core Math Standards (CCSS.MATH)
Ratios & Proportional Relationships (6-7)
CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.6.RP.A.3 Use ratio and rate reasoning to solve real-world and mathematical problems, e.g., by reasoning about tables of equivalent ratios, tape diagrams, double number line diagrams, or equations.
