This interactive resource contains information about historic climate conditions on Earth, factors that affect global climate, and future predictions of global climate change based on climate models.
Students will be engaged with readings, animated graphs, read-aloud features, videos, and questions to check for understanding.
Teaching Tips
Positives
It is engaging, interactive, and applicable to a diversity of learning styles due to the variety of media presented.
It has a vast historical scope and will encourage students to think broadly about our impact on the global climate.
Additional Prerequisites
Students should be at a high school reading level and have a baseline ability to interpret and analyze data.
Students should have basic knowledge of Earth's motions, biological evolution, and the greenhouse effect.
Differentiation
There are three videos over ten minutes in length, so you could have students get in groups to watch one and then have someone from each group present the information to the class.
Interdisciplinary connections can be made between the changing chemistry of the atmosphere and the biological impacts that resulted.
The figures and charts are all downloadable and there is a PDF version of the entire webpage.
The read-along feature provides highlighted text as the audio file plays, which may be helpful for some learners.
This resource is an interactive webpage that includes text, audio, video, and interactive components that gives an excellent overview of our current understanding of our changing climate. There are several ~10-minute videos that explore particular aspects of our climate. This is a very well-produced and well-executed webpage that effectively conveys both the basics and the nuance of climate science without overwhelming nor insulting the intelligence of students. This resource is recommended for teaching.
Standards
Science and Engineering
ESS1: Earth’s Place in the Universe
HS-ESS1-4 Use mathematical or computational representations to predict the motion of orbiting objects in the solar system.
ESS3: Earth and Human Activity
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’s systems.
Social Studies
History
History 1 (D2): Students understand major eras, major enduring themes, and historic influences in United States and world history, including the roots of democratic philosophy, ideals, and institutions in the world by analyzing and critiquing major historical eras: major enduring themes, turning points, events, consequences, and people in the history of the world and the implications for the present and future.
