Teaching Sequence

Work through this resource in the following sequence:

10 minutes

Tune In: Introducing emissions

20 minutes

Find Out: The role of carbon

30 minutes

Take Action: Communicating CO₂ emissions

5 minutes

Reflection

Tune In: Introducing emissions

Step 1

Invite students to share what they already know about climate change. You could do this through a speed-dating game where students pair up with another student to answer one of the questions below, with each student having 30 seconds to share their answer to the question with their partner. One student could then move on to pair up with another classmate and respond to a different question. Repeat until all the questions have been answered. Alternatively, you could engage students in a class discussion around the questions:

What is the natural greenhouse effect?
What is the enhanced greenhouse effect, and what causes it?
What is global warming?
What is climate change?
What is the difference between climate and weather?
What are some of the impacts of climate change?
What are greenhouse gas emissions? Which is the greenhouse gas that gets the most attention?

Note: Use the Climate Change Fact Sheet to clarify any points that are still unclear for students. They will be focusing on the final question in this lesson.

Step 2

Direct students back to the final question:

Which is the greenhouse gas that gets the most attention?

Explain to students that carbon dioxide (CO₂) is the most well-known greenhouse gas and plays an important role in trapping heat in our atmosphere. There are other greenhouse gases - such as methane and nitrous oxide - that are also problematic, but in this lesson, students will be focusing on CO₂.

Find Out: The role of carbon

Step 1

Pose the question:

What is carbon, and what is the carbon cycle?

To explore the answers to these questions, invite students to participate in a guided discussion around the following video using the timings and suggested questions and answers below to guide your discussion (note: you will return to this video throughout the Find Out part of this lesson so it would be useful to keep it on screen):

Real World: The Carbon Cycle - Essential for Life on Earth (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgFpvDNfXOk)

Start to 01:28 - What is carbon, and why are they important to life on Earth?
Suggested answer: Carbon atoms are described as one of the fundamental building blocks of all life on Earth, and the amount of Carbon that is stored in living things is enormous. Where is carbon stored? Share and discuss this image.

01:28 to 01:59 - What is the carbon cycle?
Suggested answer: The carbon cycle is a process that cycles carbon through our Earth and its atmosphere. "The carbon cycle is nature's way of reusing carbon atoms, which travel from the atmosphere into organisms in the Earth and then back into the atmosphere over and over again." (Source)
02:00 to 02:25 - What is fast carbon?
Suggested answer: The fast carbon cycle happens over years or decades. Plants absorb carbon dioxide through photosynthesis. Before being released through respiration, this carbon is used to build cells, proteins and DNA molecules within the plant. When the plant dies, microorganisms break down the dead plant material, and in the process, the carbon is released back into the atmosphere. (Source)
02:25 to 03:08 - What is slow carbon?
Suggested answer: The slow carbon cycle moves carbon very slowly between the atmosphere, lithosphere and the oceans. For example, as rocks are weathered, carbon can move from the atmosphere to the lithosphere by dissolving the rocks, which causes the run-off to flow into the sea, where it settles to the ocean floor as sediment. Over millions of years, the sea floor is compacted and turned into rock, which then gets pushed back up to the Earth's crust at fault lines between tectonic plates. Volcanoes then return this rock to the earth's surface, releasing the carbon into the atmosphere. (Source)

Step 2

Pose the questions:

What do you know about how humans are impacting the carbon cycle?
How might we affect the fast carbon cycle?

How might we affect the slow carbon cycle?
What might be the consequences of changes to the carbon cycle?

Step 3

Watch Real World: The Carbon Cycle - Essential for Life on Earth from 03:08 to 03:52. Reiterate the following:

We need plants to absorb and store CO₂; land clearing removes important carbon stores and releases more CO₂ into our atmosphere. Likewise, burning fossil fuels that were buried deep underground also releases CO₂. This extra CO₂ in our atmosphere is enhancing the greenhouse effect and leading to global warming, which in turn is causing climate change.

Step 4

Explain to your students that many scientists all around the world are working hard to understand how humans are affecting the carbon cycle and how this is contributing to climate change. When carbon bonds with oxygen it becomes CO₂, and can enter into the atmosphere.

One of the tasks that some scientists need to do is to understand how much CO₂ is being added to the atmosphere through human activity. They do this by calculating how many metric tons of CO₂ are being released and what the concentration of CO₂ in the atmosphere is.

Ask your students: what might be some potential issues in accurately measuring how much carbon dioxide is being released into the atmosphere?

Carbon dioxide is an invisible gas! However there are a number of techniques that can be used, for example:

1	Using historical data from ice cores to tell us about how CO₂ levels have changed over time to understand more about the changes we are experiencing now, for example, in Oldest Ice Core Ever Discovered Could Shed Light on Climate Change.
2	Looking at where carbon is being stored now, for example, in trees. Return to Real World: The Carbon Cycle - Essential for Life on Earth, and start the video at 03:52 and watch to the end.
3	Examining the concentration of CO₂ in the air, for example, in How Scientists Measure Carbon Dioxide in the Air. We can use this information to record the level of CO₂ as PPM (parts per million). Note: the scientist in this video is the son of Charles David Keeling who was the first person to begin systematic measurements of atmospheric CO₂ in 1956. His data was used as a graph to demonstrate the rise of CO₂ levels in our atmosphere. This graph is known as the Keeling Curve.
4	Calculating the weight of CO₂ in our atmosphere and from human activities that cause emissions to be released. The weight of CO₂ is based on PPM of CO₂ in the atmosphere and involves a complex maths problem that results in CO₂ being calculated as a metric ton. A breakdown of how CO₂ is measured can be found here.

Note: You could divide these sources amongst students and invite them to watch or read the information and report back on how each method helps us understand more about CO₂ in our atmosphere. The information above is also available on the Student Worksheet.

Take Action: Communicating CO₂ emissions

Step 1

Pose the question:

Why might we want to know about the amount of CO₂ being released into our atmosphere?

Invite students to suggest answers and explain that knowing about CO₂ levels and the human activities that generate the most CO₂ can tell us how we can reduce the emissions being released into the atmosphere. The trick for science communicators is to find ways to share details about CO₂ levels with the wider public who have little knowledge or interest in the complicated calculations required to measure CO₂. Scientists generally use metric tons (1000kg) and gigatonnes (1 billion metric tons) to explain the amounts of CO₂ in our atmosphere, and it’s incredibly hard to imagine these quantities, especially with an invisible gas. It can be easier to think in terms of a kilogram (imagine a 1kg bag of sugar or half a brick), and to relate our actions with a kg of CO₂.

Step 2

Share the following image with students (also available on the Student Worksheet):

Invite students to suggest what they think is happening in this image and how the information in this image can be used to help us take action to reduce our emissions. For example, taking a 5 minute shower and cutting Google searches in half will save 1kg of CO₂ from entering the atmosphere.

Step 3

In pairs or individually, students will now research the kg of CO₂ associated with different activities that they might participate in and will create their own infographic to share their research.

Students can use the links on this page from The Carbon Almanac as a starting point and create their infogrpahics using an online tool tool like Canva.

Encourage students to think creatively about how they can communicate the information about kg of CO₂ to an audience, remembering that infographics tend to be more effective when there is less text to read, and when the visuals are clear and communicate the message quickly, and when they have a clear title.

You could use the Infographic Assessment Rubric to guide infographic creation and to assess student work. Create an opportunity for students to share their infographics with the class or with a classmate, looking for similarities and differences.

Try to create an opportunity for students to return to their infographics at a later date to see what personal actions they have drawn from their work.

Reflection

Students can work independently to respond to the following:

Which actions for reducing CO₂ stand out to you the most and why? Select 2.

Climate Literacy: What Are Carbon Emissions?

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Summary

Learning intentions:

Students will...

Success criteria:

Students can...

Lesson guides and printables

Lesson Details

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Curriculum Mapping

Resources Required

UN Sustainable Development Goals

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