This resource contains interactive media about the history of climate science, historic measurements of temperature, and gives an introduction to the greenhouse effect.
Students will be engaged with readings, data, interactive graphs, read-aloud features, animations, 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 is user-friendly and provides a comprehensive overview of climate history and climate science.
Additional Prerequisites
Students should be at a high school reading level and have a baseline ability to interpret and analyze data.
Students should be able to interpret data and information on timelines, line charts, diagrams, and maps.
Differentiation
It can be used in a history course to connect the chapters on climate history to other events in human history and the history of human civilizations.
The figures and charts are all downloadable and there is a PDF version of the entire webpage.
At the end of all four sections, there is additional information linked.
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 give an excellent overview of the basics of climate science. 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
ESS2: Earth’s Systems
HS-ESS2-2 Analyze geoscience data to make the claim that one change to Earth’s surface can create feedbacks that cause changes to other Earth systems.
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.
