Supporting Teachers
We give science teachers the tools and skills they need to help their students overcome misconceptions and misinformation about climate change and evolution.
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Scientific Consensus
In this lesson, students create their own scientific consensus on climate change through direct interpretation with climate data, as well as examining a popular climate myth.
Age Level
Ninth grade. (The lesson can easily be adapted for 5th grade and middle school applications, as well as for AP Bio, and Environmental Science applications.)
Duration
One 60-minute class period.
Disciplinary Core Ideas
- HS-ESS2.D1: The foundation for Earth’s global climate systems is the electromagnetic radiation from the sun, as well as its reflection, absorption, storage, and redistribution among the atmosphere, ocean, and land systems, and this energy’s re-radiation into space.
- HS-ESS2.D3: Changes in the atmosphere due to human activity have increased carbon dioxide concentrations and thus affect climate.
- HS-ESS2.D4: Current models predict that, although future regional climate changes will be complex and varied, average global temperatures will continue to rise. The outcomes predicted by global climate models strongly depend on the amounts of human-generated greenhouse gases added to the atmosphere each year and by the ways in which these gases are absorbed by the ocean and biosphere.
Performance Expectations
- HS-ESS2-4: Use a model to describe how variations in the flow of energy into and out of Earth’s systems result in changes in climate.
- HS-ESS3-5: Analyze geoscience data and the results from global climate models to make an evidence-based forecast of the current rate of global or regional climate change and associated future impacts to Earth systems