Instructify

Earth Day is coming up on April 22. With that holiday approaching and the glorious springtime weather, aren’t you in the mood to get outside and do something for the environment? Well, if you’re feeling this way, it is likely that under your leadership, your students can attain this feeling also. I think that one of the most current and important topics for educators feeling the “Go-Green” bug is climate change. This year, climate change has been one of my environmental education focuses with my students, and I wanted to share with you some of the excellent resources I’ve found for teaching about this important topic.

By the book

I started with a book called How We Know What We Know About Our Changing Climate: Scientists and Kids Explore Global Warming by Lynne Cherry and Gary Braasch. This book is a great place to start teaching about climate change. It presents the scientific evidence for climate change in a straightforward, understandable, and readable way. My 7^th graders had no trouble comprehending the one to two page vignettes on serious research. Most of the chosen research highlighted in the book involved collaborations between scientists and students or other “regular” citizens. Also important for students, the book is not all gloom and doom. It presents the evidence that scientists have gathered, explains their conclusions drawn from evidence, then completely skips the “we’re all going to die” mentality that some doomsayers have, and gives students real options for taking action. As an educator, I appreciated this truthful-but-positive spin. Also as an educator, I appreciated the separate teacher’s guide for the book. While not all of the activities were flashy, it gave me some good ideas on where to start with students.

Citizen science

Inspired by the book, I have gotten my students involved in a couple of citizen science projects in which we are helping climate scientists and others track seasonal changes in wildlife and vegetation. While there are many options for this kind of involvement, the two I have chosen are Journey North’s Tulip Garden project, and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Bird Sleuth program. Both of these programs allow for what I think is an easy entry into the world of citizen science. Both also allow for online data entry and visualization, allowing you as the teacher to use that data in many ways for various projects with students. Check out this year’s tulip map and see the little red dot on Morehead City — that’s us! Journey North also offers many other data collection projects besides the tulip garden project, and most are free or cost very little to participate. For example, I spent about $40 on the tulip bulbs to plant at my school. Granted, I had received a Bright Ideas Grant from my local electrical cooperative for my climate change study, but even without the grant, a couple of parents may be willing to sponsor. The Bird Sleuth program also offers both free and paid resources that you can explore through their website.

Online tools

In addition to having my students participate in citizen science so they could get that hands-on feeling, I used several websites and blogs in my classroom. First, I happened to hear this podcast on NPR’s Science Friday just a few weeks ago. During the program, they talked about the USA National Phenology Network. In case you don’t know, phenology is the study of regular seasonal changes, and something that climate scientists study closely and use as evidence for climate change. Through this website, you (or your class) could become a phenological observer, providing valuable information to scientists nationwide. It would allow one more way for your students to get involved.

For background information, I used Windows to the Universe. It has pages of text, images, and multimedia about many earth-science topics, including climate change. An excellent feature of the site is the ability to select from three different reading levels on the text pages — a must for an inclusive classroom. Another reference is the EPA’s Climate Change for Kids site. It offers another source of text, images, games, links, and other media to help your students gain background information on climate change. Of course NASA also offers an excellent website for up-to-date information at Global Climate Change from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. This website offers some interesting interactives as well as text and images to help explain the evidence for climate change. As an added benefit, you can subscribe to an RSS feed from the site. This would be a great way to integrate the information on a more regular basis in your classroom. Finally, for a more editorial point of view, I look to Dot Earth. This is a blog published by the New York Times that “examines efforts to balance human affairs with the planet’s limits.” You could use posts from some of these blogs as starting points for verbal debates or position papers.

I hope I have given you some ideas that you can integrate into your classroom in celebration of Earth Day. Of course, don’t wait for Earth Day to encourage your students to get out there and make a difference. And if you’re not convinced that this is a worthwhile use of academic time, take a gander at this video. This man’s logic seems pretty solid, and all of us, especially those of us responsible for educating the next generation, need to take action and make a difference. -REBECCAH HAINES

How We Know What We Know About Our Changing Climate from Amazon

Journey North

Bird Sleuth

USA National Phenology Network

Windows to the Universe

EPA’s Climate Change

Global Climate Change from NASA

Dot Earth

Related stuff:

How to successfully debate the climate skeptic in your life

Scientific American explores whether cloud seeding works
Photo credit: CRASH-candy on Flickr.