This engaging summer learning activity sheet will keep your high school kids learning all summer long with experiments, podcasts, graphic novels, educational videos, and career path discussions.
The activities can be completed randomly, as a game, or they can complete the entire sheet.
Teaching Tips
Positives
The activities may inspire creativity, reflection, empathy, and community involvement.
There are a variety of activities to choose from to accommodate different needs and interests.
Additional Prerequisites
The water monitoring kit requires some materials and access to a stream or river.
You will need to come up with a method for selecting the activities.
Differentiation
For English language learners, try using the closed captioning and auto-translate feature to assist with comprehension of the videos.
Have them create a list of climate or environmental actions they learned about from the sheet and choose one or more they would like to do over the summer.
Have them present ways that households can support living more sustainability after completing at least one row or column of 5 activities.
The podcasts and videos could be a great way to pass time for kids while traveling or on summer vacations. Encourage them to complete some while they are in transit.
Use the vanishing ice video as inspiration for an art project they are passionate about. Have them use any art medium they choose for the project.
Scientist Notes
This is a summer learning challenge and it contains fun activities that will allow 9th-12th graders to learn from activists, get inspired to advocate for environmental and climate justice, and develop initiatives to upscale climate action in their communities. This challenge is engaging and recommended.
Standards
Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)
ESS3: Earth and Human Activity
HS-ESS3-4 Evaluate or refine a technological solution that reduces impacts of human activities on natural systems.
LS2: Ecosystems: Interactions, Energy, and Dynamics
HS-LS2-6 Evaluate the claims, evidence, and reasoning that the complex interactions in ecosystems maintain relatively consistent numbers and types of organisms in stable conditions, but changing conditions may result in a new ecosystem.
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: Civics
D2.Civ.10.9-12 Analyze the impact and the appropriate roles of personal interests and perspectives on the application of civic virtues, democratic principles, constitutional rights, and human rights.
Dimension 3: Gathering and Evaluating Sources
D3.1.9-12 Gather relevant information from multiple sources representing a wide range of views while using the origin, authority, structure, context, and corroborative value of the sources to guide the selection.
Dimension 4: Taking Informed Action
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.9-10.2 Determine a central idea of a text and analyze its development over the course of the text, including how it emerges and is shaped and refined by specific details; provide an objective summary of the text.
Reading: Literature (K-12)
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.11-12.5 Analyze how an author's choices concerning how to structure specific parts of a text (e.g., the choice of where to begin or end a story, the choice to provide a comedic or tragic resolution) contribute to its overall structure and meaning as well as its aesthetic impact.
Speaking & Listening (K-12)
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.
National Health Education Standards
Standard 1: Students will comprehend concepts related to health promotion and disease prevention to enhance health.
1.12.3 Analyze how environment and personal health are interrelated.
