Teaching sequence

Work through this resource material in the following sequence:

20 minutes

Tune In: What is climate change?

15 minutes

Find Out: Class discussion

25 minutes

Take Action: Ice-melt experiment

5 minutes

Reflection

Learning intentions and success criteria

Students will:

explore climate change
build their thinking and questioning skills.

Students can:

understand the term climate change
participate in an experiment.

Tune In: What is climate change?

Step 1

Ask your students to think about “climate” and its meaning. Invite students to share their responses with the class. Next, ask your students to think about “change” and its meaning. You can explore students' thinking using the following prompts:

When have you heard this word be used?
Why do you think it means that?

Step 2

Model to students placing the words together to form the term ‘climate change’ on a whiteboard.

Explain to students that this term describes the weather and temperatures that change significantly over time. The Earth's weather has always changed, but in the last 200 years, it has changed much faster than usual. Some changes happen naturally, like when the sun changes or big volcanoes erupt. But when we talk about 'climate change' today, we usually mean the changes caused by people.

Ask your students if anyone knows some of the things people are doing that are causing the climate to change. They might suggest activities like:

burning fossil fuels (making electricity, driving cars, flying planes etc)
changing habitat (cutting down trees, removing plants, damming rivers, etc)
building roads and buildings (using up resources, creating ‘hot spots’ etc)

Step 3

Watch this video with your students to explore climate change.

Climate Change Everyone’s Business - (vimeo.com/65187288/f6c1d94912)

Find Out: Class discussion

Step 1

Lead a discussion with students about climate change. Use the following prompts to guide your discussion:

How do you think climate change affects animals and plants?
Have you noticed any changes in the weather where you live?
Why do you think it is important to talk about climate change?

Take Action: Ice-melt experiment

Step 1

Explain to students that one of the main concerns for climate change is the accelerated melting of polar ice caps and glaciers. Climate change is making the Earth warmer, and when this happens, the ice at the North and South Poles starts to melt. This ice is called the polar ice caps. Unfortunately, when polar ice caps melt, animals like polar bears in the North Pole and penguins in Antarctica have a harder time finding places to live and food.

Step 2

Invite students to stand around a desk or bench in an open classroom area. Place your containers on the desk for students to view. One container should contain two ice cubes, and the other should contain two in a small amount of water. Ask students to share their predictions of which ice cubes will melt faster with the class.

Step 3

Discuss with students that the experiment they observe represents how climate change affects our polar ice caps and glaciers. As a class, record the time it takes for the ice cubes in each container to melt. As students observe and record, prompt them to discuss their observations:

What do you see?
Why do you think that is happening?
Is the result similar or different to your predictions?

Students should begin to notice that the container with two ice cubes and water is melting faster. Explain to students that this is occurring because ice melts more quickly in water than in air. After all, water is denser. It has a greater concentration of molecules than air. When ice is in water, more molecules bump against it, transferring heat energy.

Step 4

Lead a discussion with your students about their observations after the experiment using the following prompts to guide your discussion:

How is this similar or different to climate change?
What does this mean for our plants and animals?
How can we help?

Literacy extension: Invite students to record their observations in a written format.

Reflection

Invite students to reflect on what they think we can do to care for our environment and slow the progress of climate change.

Use the whiteboard to draw the table below and invite students to the whiteboard to write their responses.

Start Things we need to start doing:	Stop Things we need to stop doing:	Keep Things we need to keep doing:

Earth Hour - Climate Change Experiment

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Summary

Learning intentions:

Students will...

Success criteria:

Students can...

Lesson guides and printables

Lesson Details

Skills

Curriculum Mapping

Resources Required

UN Sustainable Development Goals

Additional Info

Related Professional Learning

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