Lesson Plan

Teaching Sequence

Work through this resource material in the following sequence:

10 minutes

Tune In: What is the current situation?

25 minutes

Find Out: What can people do?

30 minutes

Take Action: Use your knowledge to inspire more climate solution entrepreneurs.

5 minutes

Reflection

Tune In: What is the current situation?

Step 1

Show students this video from climate change warriors Greta Thunberg and George Monbiot to prompt students’ thinking about the threats and opportunities of climate change.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Q0xUXo2zEYGreta Thunberg and George Monbiot make short film on the climate crisis

As students watch, ask them to record the solutions that are offered to lessen our impact on climate change

Suggested Responses: Stop burning fossil fuels, regenerate nature, protect natural environments, restore environments and ecosystems to ensure they bounce back, stop funding things that destroy nature and instead fund the solutions.

Step 2

Invite your students to complete this modified version of the Options Explosion Visible Thinking Routine to expand their thinking about the solutions to this issue.

Encourage students to think about HOW society can implement the solutions mentioned in the video. What will people, businesses and governments need to do at an individual level and beyond that? What skills does society need? What jobs do we need to create? Where do we need to focus our time and energy?

LIST - What are the obvious options to reduce climate change? What do you know needs to happen? What does the video state needs to happen?
BRAINSTORM - What are the hidden options to reduce climate change? What can make those options a reality (Think directly and indirectly)? What can individuals do? What can governments and businesses do?
ASK - What have we learned from investigating these options? What can you do to make these options a reality?

Find Out: What can people do?

Step 1

Explain to students that for society to make progress and focus our time and energy on projects and actions that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and lessen the effects of climate change, we need educated, skilled people who are passionate about our world and want to make a difference in their personal lives as well as through their careers. As society transitions to a net zero economy, these careers will be increasingly in demand. Still, we must ensure people know about these careers and are inspired to make a difference. Having scientific knowledge can be an amazing tool to not only understand the situation more yourself but to be able to inform and inspire others!

Watch the following video with your students, which shows a few different jobs that will be in demand in the future.

Best Jobs in Climate Change - Best Colleges (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAfBpF4fO3U)

Discuss with your students

Are the only jobs that can influence climate change science related?
What surprised them?
What interested them?
What questions do they have?

Step 2

Also, show your students page 2 of the Million Jobs plan. The "Million Jobs Plan" is a proposal developed by Beyond Zero Emissions (BZE), an Australian climate change think tank. This plan outlines a strategy to create one million jobs in Australia while addressing climate change and transitioning to a sustainable, zero-emissions economy. The plan emphasizes investments in various sectors, such as renewable energy, infrastructure, and industry, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and create employment opportunities. It aims to address economic recovery and environmental sustainability by focusing on green technologies and industries.

Page 2 of this plan shows the areas where the most economic growth can occur as society transitions away from fossil fuels. These areas include

Renewable energy and transmission
Retrofits and new buildings
Electric vehicles and green transport,
Clean manufacturing and mining,
Land regeneration,
Waste recycling.

Give your students 5 minutes to look into this document. Encourage them to look at all these areas before focusing on an area that interests them the most. In the previous lessons in this unit, students have looked in detail at renewable energy and better buildings through the context of energy and energy efficiency. However, many other areas might play more into student's strengths.

Note: Our Year 9 Earth and Space Unit - Exploring Earth’s Systems: Carbon, Climate and Renewable Energy complements this unit by looking more in-depth at the effects greenhouse gas emissions have on the carbon cycle and ways we can lessen these effects as well as methods of removing carbon from the atmosphere and creating nature positive renewable technologies. These lessons focus more on the Land Use Section of this report.

Take Action: Use your knowledge to inspire more climate solution entrepreneurs

Step 1

Divide your students into groups of 3-4. Their task in this section is to create a social media campaign to inspire more people to consider a job/career in a sector that will help reduce the effects of climate change and help society transition to a net zero economy. This can be completed as a design sprint where students make a plan and rough draft of their campaign. If you have the time available, you may give students more time to flesh their presentations out into a version that would be suitable to be posted online!

Encourage students to choose an area or specific job that they learned about from the resources above or through their own research. Their social media campaign should:

Be directed at young Australians
Incorporate their knowledge of climate change to inspire people to listen and raise awareness of the current situation
Incorporate their scientific knowledge of energy, energy efficiency, environmental impacts or how scientific knowledge can help people make decisions
Be creative
Encourage people to understand a particular job or sector and how this sector can result in lessening the effects of climate change
Raise awareness of solutions through career promotion and showcase the exciting and interesting parts of the career and sector

Your students can present this in an engaging format for people their age. Short TikTok/Instagram style videos, social media posts, posters designed to be shared through social media, or another method they (and you) see as appropriate! These campaigns don’t need to be shared on social media. Feel free to use methods of presenting these types of formats that work with your class and school community.

Note: If you want your students to focus on the physics and energy knowledge they have gained over the lessons in this unit, we would recommend focusing on the Renewable energy, electric vehicles and Better buildings sections of the Land use plan as these areas incorporate the explicit skills and knowledge students will have learned from their work on Energy. If you want to expand this to allow for multiple areas of interest to be explored, give your students the option to choose any section of the Million Jobs plan they wish! Students may also focus on a section that interests them and then use the internet to find exciting and innovative careers in this sector.

Some short resources to give your students an understanding of styles that may work

Step 2

Students can present their campaigns to the class. Encourage groups to give constructive feedback on each other's presentation regarding how engaging it is, whether it compels students to want to find out more, and how they think their skills and knowledge would allow them to pursue this sector. You can use the following questions for your class to draw out their observations.

Would you stop scrolling to watch this, why/why not?
Did this make you interested in this sector/career?
What skills and knowledge would you need to be successful in this career?
How does this campaign raise awareness?
What difference would a job like this make?
Can you see any similarities with your own campaign?

Reflection

Invite your students to reflect on today's lesson by answering the following questions

Write a headline that would go in the newspaper based on what you’ve learnt today to let people know what the most important piece of information they should know is

If you could pick any dream job that would reduce climate change in some way, what would it be?
What would be the coolest thing about ending up in a job like the ones you researched today?

Using Your Scientific Knowledge to Inspire People to Make a Difference

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UN Sustainable Development Goals

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