This podcast highlights the important role that forests play in the fight against climate change, focusing on types of forests, forest management, sustainable forestry, urban forestry, and the best ways to conserve forests.
Students will learn more about sustainable forest management, as well as the integration of urban forestry with urban planning for climate benefits, as they listen to interviews with two experts in the field.
Teaching Tips
Positives
The narrator of this podcast is engaging, funny, and relatable to young people.
This episode encourages students to find ways to protect forests and to spend time in them.
Additional Prerequisites
There are several options for how to access this podcast, including listening directly on the site, downloading it, or finding The Big Melt within Spotify, Amazon Music, or Apple Podcasts.
The narrator in this podcast uses phrases and colloquialisms (such a "B-T-dubs," meaning "by the way") that may not be familiar to all students and could require explanation.
Differentiation
Since this podcast is more than 30 minutes long, break it up into smaller parts, prompting students to take notes on the definitions of forest types, the relationship between forests and climate change, the two interviews, or even smaller chunks if necessary.
Show students how to locate episodes of The Big Melt that they might enjoy as they find other episodes of interest or even subscribe to the podcast.
Put students into groups and ask them to discuss the interview with Cindy Cheng about urban forestry, also further researching the impacts that forests can have on urban areas.
As an extension activity, have students analyze this scientific article which provides an overview of forest protection and assesses the qualitative and quantitative benefits of protecting forests.
Scientist Notes
This resource is a podcast, about 30 minutes in length, by Sarah (the host of The Big Melt podcast). This episode gives an overview of forest management and forests in general, specifically in Canada. The episode starts by defining forests and discussing why they are important. It then goes into discussing urban forestry and how forests and climate change are related. Two people are interviewed in the podcast, Darren Sleep the Senior Director of Conservation Strategies at the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) and Cindy Cheng a PhD candidate in Forestry at the University of British Columbia. The podcast encourages students to spend time in the forest and protect them. The information presented is accurate and this resource is recommended for teaching.
Standards
Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)
ESS3: Earth and Human Activity
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.
HS-ESS3-6 Use a computational representation to illustrate the relationships among Earth systems and how those relationships are being modified due to human activity.
LS2: Ecosystems: Interactions, Energy, and Dynamics
MS-LS2-4 Construct an argument supported by empirical evidence that changes to physical or biological components of an ecosystem affect populations.
HS-LS2-7 Design, evaluate, and refine a solution for reducing the impacts of human activities on the environment and biodiversity.
College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Standards
Dimension 2: Geography
D2.Geo.2.6-8 Use maps, satellite images, photographs, and other representations to explain relationships between the locations of places and regions, and changes in their environmental characteristics.
D2.Geo.10.6-8 Analyze the ways in which cultural and environmental characteristics vary among various regions of the world.
D2.Geo.6.9-12 Evaluate the impact of human settlement activities on the environmental and cultural characteristics of specific places and regions.
Common Core English Language Arts Standards (CCSS.ELA)
Speaking & Listening (K-12)
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.7.3 Delineate a speaker's argument and specific claims, evaluating the soundness of the reasoning and the relevance and sufficiency of the evidence.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.9-10.3 Evaluate a speaker's point of view, reasoning, and use of evidence and rhetoric, identifying any fallacious reasoning or exaggerated or distorted evidence.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.11-12.3 Evaluate a speaker's point of view, reasoning, and use of evidence and rhetoric, assessing the stance, premises, links among ideas, word choice, points of emphasis, and tone used.
