Teaching Sequence

Work through this resource in the following sequence:

10 minutes

Tune In: Key points about climate change

20 minutes

Find Out: Earth's spheres

25 minutes

Take Action: How are Earth's spheres impacted by climate change?

5 minutes

Reflection

Tune In: Key points about climate change

Step 1

Invite students to participate in a barometer activity. Set up a line on the floor long enough for all students to stand along. Label one end as ‘strongly agree’ and the other end as ‘strongly disagree’. Read out the following statements and ask students to quietly position themselves along the line in the places that most align with their responses.

As you read out each statement, invite students to discuss their position along the line. This is an opportunity to share thoughts and feelings about the topics raised, but be aware that this can be an emotive topic for many young people; please ensure that students are aware of your class discussion guidelines (see the Talking About Climate Change factsheet).

Statements:

I know what climate change is.
I know the difference between climate and weather.
I can name some of the causes of climate change.
I know what the greenhouse effect is.
I know what some of the impacts of climate change are expected to be.
We are already living with a changing climate.
I feel pretty relaxed about climate change.

Students will now begin exploring these topics in more detail.

Step 2

Watch the following video with your students called What is Climate Change? until 4:55 mins:

What is Climate Change?: Crash Course Biology #8 (youtu.be/Y1mPWVzaGQY?feature=shared)

Step 3

Once you have finished watching the clip, distribute the Climate Change Factsheet to your students, and in pairs ask them to answer the following questions on their student worksheet.

What is the difference between weather and climate?
What is climate change?
How is ‘climate change’ different to ‘weather’ and ‘climate’?
What is the greenhouse effect, and why is it a good thing?
What is causing the Earth to trap more heat?
What are the effects of climate change?

Find Out: Earth's spheres

Step 1

Watch the following video with your students and invite them to answer the questions below on their Student Worksheet

Why reducing our carbon emissions matters (a little story about climate change) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rivf479bW8Q)

What does this video tell you about the role of the greenhouse effect on our Earth?
What does this video tell you about human impacts on the climate?

Once complete, invite students to share their answers through class discussion.

Note: Lesson 2 in this unit digs into the greenhouse effect in more detail, and lesson 3 looks more closely at carbon.

Step 2

Explain to your students that a change in climate isn’t just confined to the atmosphere. Instead, it affects all the spheres of the Earth (hydrosphere, lithosphere, cryosphere and biosphere) and the interactions between the spheres. There are a number of effects of climate change, and each of these effects will have a range of impacts on each sphere.

If you haven’t covered the spheres in detail with your students, you might like to watch this video to introduce the concepts to them. (Note: This video omits the cryosphere and incorporates it into the hydrosphere)

Earth’s Interconnected Cycles - Lincoln Learning Solutions (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6j5iHvYBIcg)

For the purposes of this lesson, the 5 spheres are:

1. The atmosphere is a mixture of water vapour and gases surrounding Earth, including nitrogen, oxygen, methane, and nitrous oxide.
2. The biosphere contains all living things on Earth (plants, animals, bacteria). Overlaps with the atmosphere, lithosphere and hydrosphere.
3. The hydrosphere includes all the water on the planet (oceans, lakes, rivers, groundwater, etc.)
4. The cryosphere includes all the frozen water on earth, including the ice at the poles and glaciers and icebergs.
5. The lithosphere is the solid part of the earth found under your feet (Earth’s crust and upper mantle, rocks, soil and landforms).

Step 3

To have a full understanding of climate change and the far-reaching effects of human activity on our environment, it is important to understand how the spheres interact with each other. In pairs, invite students to draw 5 evenly-spaced circles on a piece of A3 paper, labelling each one with the name of a sphere and leaving enough room to create a mind map between the circles.

Discuss with students what interactions they can already see between the spheres. For example:

Water in the hydrosphere evaporates and moves into the atmosphere.
Oxygen from the atmosphere is used by animals and humans in the biosphere.
Decaying animal and plant matter is incorporated into the lithosphere.

Give students a few minutes to label their mindmaps with some of the interactions they saw in the video. They might like to research some interactions as well.

If you want students to focus more on the characteristics of each sphere before delving into the interactions, encourage them to make their circles bigger and use the middles to jot down some notes about the sphere itself, using the space in between the circles to represent the interactions.

Take Action: How are Earth's spheres impacted by climate change?

Step 1

Once students have a good understanding of how the different spheres interact with each other, ask your students to recall what the expected effects of climate change (from the climate change factsheet) are from the beginning of the lesson.

Hotter temperatures
Changes in storm severity
Increased drought
A warming, rising ocean
Loss of species (Source)

Step 2

Ask your pairs to switch to a different colour - their task is to update their mindmap with how these expected effects of climate change can impact the interactions between the spheres.

To help create their mind maps, students can research to explore the impacts on each sphere and their interactions as well as use the following resources:

Note: Students requiring extension could complete this task independently or in small groups.

Once students have completed their mind map, pair 2 or 3 groups together to discuss their connections and fill in any they might have missed. Here are some examples to help you guide your students

Lithosphere	Location and the shape of the Earth itself can affect climate change. Equators are closer to solar radiation, so are warmer. Volcanoes expel gases into the atmosphere. Mountains influence rainfall patterns.
Biosphere	Living things generate gases and extract them from the atmosphere through respiration, photosynthesis, decay, etc.
Hydrosphere	Oceans hold heat. In tropical zones, they can be so warm that they evaporate, contributing to rainfall patterns. The warmer they are, the more of their dissolved carbon gets released into the atmosphere.
Atmosphere	Constantly absorbs or releases moisture according to its temperature. Solar radiation also affects winds, which push warm away from warmer zones and towards colder ones. Carbon, which was originally in the atmosphere, was incorporated into growing plants and stored in the biosphere. When those plants died, the carbon they contained was transformed into fossil fuels over millions of years. Humans have mined and burned these fossil fuels, returning huge amounts of carbon back into the atmosphere in a fraction of the time it took the carbon to accumulate in the biosphere.
Cryosphere	Melting ice and permafrost cools ocean currents as they circulate. Cooler water can absorb more carbon dioxide than warm water.

Finally, explain to students that exploring these impacts can be overwhelming and upsetting. It’s important to remember that there are many people all around the world who are working to meet the challenges of climate change, including scientists, engineers, politicians, car manufacturers, energy providers, fashion designers, families, teachers and students. And we already have many of the solutions to the challenges of climate change. Students will have the chance to explore some of these in other lessons in this unit. In addition, sharing a video like the one below could be helpful.

Climate Change's Best Hope - NOVA PBS Official (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWu3TlB7XdY)

Reflection

Climate change is a big, complex topic that can’t be addressed in one lesson (some people spend years working to understand it!). Think about what you looked at in this lesson and respond to the following:

What questions do you have about the topics raised in this lesson (minimum 3 questions)?

Note: You could use any questions students generate to guide further discussion or investigation.

Climate Science: An Introduction To Climate Change

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Summary

Learning intentions:

Students will...

Success criteria:

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Lesson Guides and Printables

Lesson Details

Skills

Curriculum Mapping

Resources Required

UN Sustainable Development Goals

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