In this digital picture book, Ava, an Indigenous girl from Canada, and her friend Earthly discover that children around the world are working to make the Earth healthier.
Students will learn that climate action is a complex topic and that some climate solutions can create other climate problems.
Teaching Tips
Positives
Students will learn that people in countries with fewer resources suffer disproportionately from climate change, even though their countries contribute fewer emissions than wealthier countries.
There is a glossary at the end of the book.
Additional Prerequisites
This is the ninth and final book in the ClimateScience picture book series. The book features characters from previous ClimateScience books.
Teachers may want to go over the words in the glossary before sharing the book with students.
Differentiation
Upper elementary classes could use this book to discuss systemic oppression. In the book, the people in power did not include indigenous people when making decisions. Students could consider the following questions:
Why is it important to involve the entire community when making big decisions?
Why were the indigenous people left out of the decision-making process?
How can a community work together when people have different ideas or beliefs?
What is the role of a leader? What makes a person qualified to lead?
Students could draw pictures and write about how they could help Earthly to bring home and share with their families. Ideas from the book include eating less meat, recycling, buying fewer things, planting trees, collecting rainwater for crops, using sustainable farming practices, and sharing their knowledge with others.
Older students could choose a class project to help Earthly or write letters to leaders about their climate concerns.
There is no "silver bullet" to combat climate change. This resource underscores the importance of taking collective climate actions to mitigate the impact of climate change and environmental degradation globally. Although there is no science to verify, this story is important to boost students' morale in co-creating site-specific climate actions. Above all, this resource is recommended for teaching.
Standards
Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)
ESS3: Earth and Human Activity
K-ESS3-1 Use a model to represent the relationship between the needs of different plants or animals (including humans) and the places they live.
K-ESS3-3 Communicate solutions that will reduce the impact of humans on the land, water, air, and/or other living things in the local environment.
4-ESS3-1 Obtain and combine information to describe that energy and fuels are derived from natural resources and that their uses affect the environment.
5-ESS3-1 Obtain and combine information about ways individual communities use science ideas to protect the Earth’s resources and environment.
College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Standards
Dimension 2: Geography
D2.Geo.10.K-2 Describe changes in the physical and cultural characteristics of various world regions.
D2.Geo.12.K-2 Identify ways that a catastrophic disaster may affect people living in a place.
D2.Geo.4.K-2 Explain how weather, climate, and other environmental characteristics affect people's lives in a place or region.
D2.Geo.12.3-5 Explain how natural and human-made catastrophic events in one place affect people living in other places.
D2.Geo.9.3-5 Analyze the effects of catastrophic environmental and technological events on human settlements and migration.
