Nature Observing for Climate Change Module

• In this multi-unit module, students will learn how to keep a nature observation journal that will be beneficial for climate science investigations.
• This module incorporates skills such as measurement and estimation, making inferences, drawing diagrams, collecting data, and understanding the difference between facts and opinions to help students create a journal that could be useful for future climate scientists.

Positives

• This lesson does a great job of identifying unknown words and defining them for students prior to seeing them in context.
• This is a great lesson for students who may be anxious with the weight of being responsible for making a difference in climate change and gives students something they can do to contribute every day when they are feeling overwhelmed.

Additional Prerequisites

• Some students, including English language learners, may need the terms observation, data, scientist, climate, botany, compact, metadata, context, and possibly other terms defined prior to starting the lesson.
• Students should have a basic understanding of the causes of climate change and what climate change is.
• Clicking on the video on slide 6 of the Skills You Need: Measuring slide deck will not play the video, however, the link for slide 5 on the References slide will take you to the video (the slide 6 link is a different video).
• It may be beneficial for students to have explicitly practiced making inferences prior to doing this lesson.
• Students should understand how to measure objects to the nearest centimeter or inch.

Differentiation

• Most of the information presented in this lesson is done so through slides. Students have the option to read the slides or have them read to them.
• After watching the Audubon videos, students can discuss the effect that climate change has on bird habitats and populations, then research the effects and create a public service announcement.
• Students can discuss how one person can make a difference for the environment and brainstorm ways they can make a difference for the environment.
• Students can discuss how to record their location, the difference between relative and absolute location, latitude and longitude, and the best method of recording the locations in their journals.
• Language arts classes could practice letter formatting with the letter to a climate scientist activity, giving students an authentic purpose for their writing.
• History classes can discuss the lasting impacts that figures in history mentioned in the lesson have had and can discuss why their contributions are still relevant today.