I was so proud when in June 2020 my state of New Jersey became the FIRST state in the country to adopt cross-disciplinary climate change education standards for grades K through 12. I agreed with our legislators that as educators, we have an obligation to provide all kids with dynamic education on this issue of utmost importance.
I teach in a relatively conservative town that definitely includes parents who do not ‘believe’ in climate change. However, I’ve made a commitment to teaching this topic with 100% emphasis on DATA and 0% emphasis on politics. My hope is that my students will educate their parents!
The greatest success in teaching climate change comes from helping students to make real-world connections with the science. The collection of resources in this blog post are focused on this goal. I hope that you find these resources helpful in your planning!
Climate Change Lesson Libraries
🌡️ NASA Climate Kids website has student-friendly mini-lessons on all sorts of topics related to climate change.
🌡️ The UCAR Center for Science Education Climate and Water Teaching Box contains lessons focusing specifically on glaciers, sea level rise, and water cycle pattern changes.
🌡️ You do have to sign up for a free account, but the Educator Resources at Our Climate Our Future are a great way to unpack the facts about climate change. The lessons are also formatted as Google Docs!
🌡️ The website Climate Curriculum Climate Lessons has climate change lessons organized by grade-level that are helpful for gathering ideas and finding additional resources.
🌡️ I turn to National Geographic a lot when I’m planning lessons and units. The National Geographic Climate Change Resource Library has high-interest readings and fantastic activities for teaching about all sorts of topics related to climate change.
🌡️ You can filter the PBS Learning Media Climate Lessons and Activities by grade level and also to view just the lesson plans, interactive lessons, and/or videos. With a teacher account, you can share the interactive lessons with your students on Google Classroom.
🌡️ The CLEAN Climate and Energy Education website has all sorts of climate-related activities, videos, and lessons that you can sort by grade level and type.
Interactives and Simulations
🛰️ NASA’s simple and straight-forward Climate Time Machine provides clear, historical and projected graphical data on sea ice, sea level rise, carbon dioxide accumulation in the atmosphere, and global temperatures.
🛰️ You will love bringing the issue ‘close to home’ for your students with The Climate Explorer interactive. This website allows you to input your county, city or town and it provides past and projected future climate maps, temperature graphs, flooding and weather data specific to where you live.
🛰️ To help your students to understand the science behind why some gas molecules behave as greenhouse gasses by trapping heat from certain light wavelengths, have them explore the PhET Molecules and Light Simulation Lab.
🛰️ If you’re looking for a high-quality and focused interactive to help students explore the relationship between carbon dioxide, water vapor as a greenhouse gas, and Earth’s temperature, check out the High Adventure Science Exploring Climate Change Interactive.
Intro to Climate Change Digital Mini-Unit
🔆 All of the above simulation resources are integrated into my Intro to Climate Change Digital Mini-Unit, which is a really nice way to hit the big ideas about climate change. This unit is organized as Google Doc lessons, each with multiple parts that students can complete at their own pace or that can be integrated into a blended-learning classroom. This unit is editable so you can add extension activities for your high-fliers or take parts out for your lower students.
🔆 I also created a Climate Change Abracadabra Pixel Art Vocabulary Review activity to help students review the vocabulary associated with this unit.
TED Resources
🌩️ The TEDed Our Changing Climate filter has so many interesting animated videos covering lots of concepts related to climate change. These work as great extensions to lessons to dive a little deeper. Try using the “Think” and “Dig Deeper” questions to guide your students’ processing of the video.
🌩️ For an easy-to-facilitate collaborative learning activity, click on this link to head to the TED Talks Climate Change videos. This link already filters to videos of 6 to 12 minutes in duration. Choose a handful of these Talks that would be interesting and appropriate for your students. Then, download my free TED Talk Digital Graphic Organizer. Assign your students to a video to watch and share the graphic organizer with them on Google Classroom. Once all students have completed their graphic organizer, put them into groups to share their summaries with one another. Everyone will learn something new and have a chance to share their takeaways from their own TED Talk.
Graphics and Data
⚡ For beautiful and data-backed graphics on all sorts of aspects of the changing climate, see the Climate Central Graphics gallery.
⚡ I always keep a data-centric approach to teaching climate change and leave out the politics. NASA’s Evidence of Climate Change site is a go-to for current data and information on climate change. Just be forewarned that the NASA site can be a rabbit-hole that sucks you in!
Let Students Explore!
🌍 If you want to strike a chord with your students, the Polar Bear International educator website has learning materials focused on– you guessed it– polar bears and the changing climate. Students can track collared polar bears, watch polar bear cams to see the animals in action, and learn how to draw them too!
🌍 The Today I Learned Climate Podcast has 15-minute and shorter episodes that ‘break down the science, technologies, and policies behind climate change, how it’s impacting us, and what we can do about it. Each quick episode gives you the what, why, and how on climate change — from real scientists and experts — to help us make informed decisions for our future.’
🌍 One of my students’ favorite projects of the year has consistently been our Climate Change Blog Project. Students will research a question about an aspect of climate change that they are interested in and write a blog post about their topic. Each student’s blog post will include paragraphs written in their own words, images to support their research, a ‘my take’ section for which they write candidly about their experience researching their question, and a works cited section. Every student will draft and create a live post on a central class blog. Students will then have the opportunity to read one another’s blog posts and write thoughtful comments and questions about each others’ posts.
My students love this project because they research questions that they have generated or have chosen themselves and they write their post for an authentic audience/purpose. There is a social element to it as they read and comment on each other’s posts. Many students have never had the opportunity to write blog posts before and I have found that the novelty of this makes students feel engaged and excited to interact with one another in this type of space.
This project is also a perfect way to meet the NGSS Standard MS-ESS3-5: Ask questions to clarify evidence of the factors that have caused the rise in global temperatures over the past century. Check out this project by clicking on the image below:
I hope that these resources help you to plan dynamic and data-centric lessons on this seriously important topic.
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