Learning resources
There are plenty of resources, tools, ideas and approaches that teachers can use for teaching about climate change in their classrooms, especially when teaching the importance of detecting natural and anthropogenic factors.
This section looks at some examples of teaching materials, approaches and available resources.
Finding reliable and trustworthy content on the causes and effects of climate change is important.
ArcGIS Storymaps offers lots of examples of useful content to use.
Activity: Access the different chapters of the Climate Factbook for education, created using ArcGIS Storymaps and consider how each of them might be used with students.
Activity: Identify which of these Storymaps might be useful for you to use with your students?
– Atlas For A Changing Planet
– Climate Change in Antarctica
– Climate Change and Adaptation : New England
– How green is your neighbourhood?
– Climate resilience
– Teach Climate from ESRI UK
Climate change digital escape room
By using simple tools for creating quizzes, such as Google forms, teachers can create a climate change-themed digital escape room.
For each challenge or puzzle, students learn about a different aspect of natural or anthropogenic climate change. For example, one puzzle could involve matching greenhouse gases to their primary anthropogenic sources (like CO2 to burning fossil fuels). Another example could involve decoding a message about natural climate change drivers like volcanic eruptions or solar cycles.
This is a fun, game-like approach that encourages critical thinking and problem-solving.
Activity: Play the video to see instructions on how to create a digital escape room
Climate impact reearch project
Students could investigate some of the different impacts of climate change on different parts of the world using climate data tools like Google Earth Timelapse.
Click image of the Aral Sea to enlarge
Activity: Use Google Earth and the Timelapse option to study the geographical and climatic conditions of different locations over the past 40 years.
Note down key observations such as land use patterns, ice, water bodies etc.
Climate games and simulations
There are many games and simulation on the theme of climate change.
Activity: Explore the game: “Can you reach net zero by 2050” created by the Financial Times.
Students will need to understand the causes of climate change to keep global warming to 1.5C by cutting energy-related carbon dioxide emissions to reach net zero by 2050.
Source: https://ig.ft.com/climate-game/
Students will be asked to deal with greenhouse gases, and protect people and nature, for the planet to remain habitable by choosing different approaches, roles and activities.
Some items for discussion with students might include:
– What character in the game did they choose and why?
– What natural and anthropogenic factors of climate change were detected in the game? .
– How did their choices affect the natural and anthropogenic factors of climate change?
How might this game be used in your classroom?
Activity: Explore the Teaching the Future Gallery of climate games and simulations and identify the most interesting ones for your classes.
Consider the value of these games in understanding the complexity of climate change.
Review the gamification techniques and gamified learning approaches they offer.