In this interactive fortune-telling game, students explore four potential solutions to climate change and get their "fortunes" read using informational "Tarot" cards about empowering girls and women, eliminating food waste, using more renewable energy, and switching to plant-rich diets.
Students will watch a short video about each solution, choose the solution they think is the best, and answer questions to see if the solution they chose aligns with their answers.
Teaching Tips
Positives
The game's fortune-telling theme is fun and engaging.
It ends with a positive and empowering message about how students can make a difference in stopping climate change.
Additional Prerequisites
There is a help button to assist students if they are having trouble navigating the game.
Students must watch all the videos for the "Next" button to appear and move on.
Students cannot go back in the game. They will need to start over from the beginning.
Students should already be familiar with how and why the climate is changing.
Differentiation
For science classes, this is a great resource to introduce some of the major solutions to climate change and tie them into lessons about the carbon cycle, photosynthesis, decomposition, and the energy lost at each trophic level.
If there is limited access to technology, students could complete the game with a partner/small group or teachers could run the game as an entire class and have students vote on the best solution.
After the game, students could use this guide and this resource about the top individual solutions and write to one of their representatives about enacting local solutions to climate change.
To start implementing solutions at your school, check out this guide to starting a meatless Mondays program and this one about putting solar panels on your school.
Other resources related to climate change solutions include this video by The YEARS Project, this table of solutions by Project Drawdown, and this lesson plan by SubjectToClimate.
Scientist Notes
This game explores four basic climate solutions for students to learn and implement in their environment. There is no silver bullet as all solutions are imperative for limiting CO2 levels. This game is ideal for students.
Standards
Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)
ESS3: Earth and Human Activity
MS-ESS3-3 Apply scientific principles to design a method for monitoring and minimizing a human impact on the environment.
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.
LS2: Ecosystems: Interactions, Energy, and Dynamics
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.13.9-12 Evaluate public policies in terms of intended and unintended outcomes, and related consequences.
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.6.2 Interpret information presented in diverse media and formats (e.g., visually, quantitatively, orally) and explain how it contributes to a topic, text, or issue under study.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.9-10.2 Integrate multiple sources of information presented in diverse media or formats (e.g., visually, quantitatively, orally) evaluating the credibility and accuracy of each source.