This classroom activity has students create a poster about one of eleven proposed climate solutions, including reducing food waste, educating girls, plant-based meats, and more.
Students will practice reading comprehension, group work, and public speaking while learning about important climate science subjects.
The resource includes a teacher's guide, a student handout, and sources.
Teaching Tips
Positives
This resource includes a thorough teacher's guide and an instruction sheet for students that features a poster exemplar.
The research and reading links are excellent resources that can be differentiated for readers at multiple levels.
Additional Prerequisites
Students should have some background knowledge on climate change and potential solutions.
In order to complete this project, students will need access to the reading materials from the teacher's guide; these are best distributed digitally.
Differentiation
This resource would work equally well in language arts or science classes that are working on non-fiction reading comprehension, public speaking, or climate change topics.
Cross-curricular connections can be made in health or social studies classes that are discussing how healthy choices can also be climate solutions, or how citizen and government action can lead to climate solutions.
This project can be extended by providing a text set of additional resources for more research.
Consider providing a rubric or exemplar for public speaking.
Scientist Notes
In this resource, students can engage in brainstorming and research activities on climate solutions to better understand their effects on the environment, people, and how they might be used to address the global climate crisis. This is wise and ought to be taught in schools.
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.
Common Core English Language Arts Standards (CCSS.ELA)
Reading: Informational Text (K-12)
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.6.4 Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative, connotative, and technical meanings.
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.4.3 Explain events, procedures, ideas, or concepts in a historical, scientific, or technical text, including what happened and why, based on specific information in the text.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.4.10 By the end of year, read and comprehend informational texts, including history/social studies, science, and technical texts, in the grades 4-5 text complexity band proficiently, with scaffolding as needed at the high end of the range.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.5.1 Quote accurately from a text when explaining what the text says explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text.
Speaking & Listening (K-12)
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.5.1 Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grade 5 topics and texts, building on others' ideas and expressing their own clearly.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.5.4 Report on a topic or text or present an opinion, sequencing ideas logically and using appropriate facts and relevant, descriptive details to support main ideas or themes; speak clearly at an understandable pace.
College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Standards
Dimension 4: Taking Informed Action
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.
