This video explains urban heat and its impact on various communities of color in Phoenix, Arizona.
Students learn about urban heat islands, mean radiant temperature, and redlining and its effect on communities of color.
Teaching Tips
Positives
It contains graphics that aid understanding of the video.
It explains the effect of redlining on communities of color.
It describes how urban heat islands affects communities of color more than others.
Additional Prerequisites
Students should be familiar with environmental racism.
Differentiation
Teachers could use this video to introduce environmental racism to 6th-8th graders.
Teachers could use this video to explain the effects of redlining in a history class.
Teachers could use part 0:28-1:05 to describe mean radiant temperature.
Click here for a time-lapse video on Tokyo’s heat island effect.
Click here for a lesson plan on urban heat islands.
Click here for a video on the benefits of urban trees.
Click here for an StC lesson plan on redlining and environmental racism.
Scientist Notes
This resource provides in detail the concept of urban heat islands, redlining, and environmental racism in some parts of the USA. This is suitable to inspire students to advocate for systemic change and environmental justice activism. The resource is recommended.
Standards
College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Standards
Dimension 2: Geography
D2.Geo.4.6-8 Explain how cultural patterns and economic decisions influence environments and the daily lives of people in both nearby and distant places.
D2.Geo.4.9-12 Analyze relationships and interactions within and between human and physical systems to explain reciprocal influences that occur among them.
D2.Geo.5.9-12 Evaluate how political and economic decisions throughout time have influenced cultural and environmental characteristics of various places and regions.
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.
Common Core English Language Arts Standards (CCSS.ELA)
Speaking & Listening (K-12)
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.6.3 Delineate a speaker's argument and specific claims, distinguishing claims that are supported by reasons and evidence from claims that are not.
