In these testimonials, residents of the United Kingdom explain why they have chosen to stop flying and how the decision has impacted their travels.
Students will learn that alternative forms of transportation can be less convenient and more expensive than flying, but they are better for the environment and often offer travelers interesting experiences.
Teaching Tips
Positives
The resource offers testimonials from diverse perspectives.
Students will learn that limiting air travel sometimes opens up opportunities for alternative travel adventures.
Each testimonial shows approximately how long it will take to read in full, ranging from one to five minutes.
Additional Prerequisites
Students should have some background knowledge on carbon emissions and how airplanes contribute to climate change.
Teachers may want to share some background information from the Flight Free UK website with students to help them understand the testimonials.
Differentiation
Students in language arts classes could choose a testimonial to read and then write one or two sentences to summarize the main idea of the testimonial. After writing, students could pair up with a student who read the same testimonial to compare summaries.
Social studies classes could use this real-time map of flights to better understand how many people are traveling by air on any given day. Students could discuss alternative modes of transportation for short and long-distance travel.
Other resources on this topic include this NOAA article about the impact of aviation on global warming and this lesson on aviation and climate change.
Scientist Notes
The resource includes personal commitment stories for a year without flying. Limiting air travel would be one of the most important ways to combat climate change because the aviation sector produces a considerable amount of carbon emissions. The use of this resource in the classroom is advised.
Standards
College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Standards
Dimension 4: Taking Informed Action
D4.7.6-8 Assess their individual and collective capacities to take action to address local, regional, and global problems, taking into account a range of possible levers of power, strategies, and potential outcomes.
D4.6.3-5 Draw on disciplinary concepts to explain the challenges people have faced and opportunities they have created, in addressing local, regional, and global problems at various times and places.
D4.7.9-12 Assess options for individual and collective action to address local, regional, and global problems by engaging in self-reflection, strategy identification, and complex causal reasoning.
Common Core English Language Arts Standards (CCSS.ELA)
Reading: Informational Text (K-12)
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.3.2 Determine the main idea of a text; recount the key details and explain how they support the main idea.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.4.2 Determine the main idea of a text and explain how it is supported by key details; summarize the text.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.11-12.6 Determine an author's point of view or purpose in a text in which the rhetoric is particularly effective, analyzing how style and content contribute to the power, persuasiveness or beauty of the text.
