Teaching Climate

In this interactive lesson, students will use kinesthetic techniques to model Earth's orbit around the Sun for a year. In this activity students will understand the astronomical meaning of an earth year, and learn the difference between a rotation and an orbit.

In this resource, students will investigate impacts of a warming climate on sugar maple and paper birch, two trees of special importance to the Lake Superior Ojibwe. Making maple sugar and harvesting birch bark are cultural practices that occur in the spring. As students work through this unit, they will consider how climate change is affecting the sustainability of these tree species and the activities and traditions they may enjoy.

This video provides entertaining animations about the similarities and differences between weather and climate. It is very simple and fast. References are provided at the end of the video.

This kinesthetic activity demonstrates to students that the earth's tilt is what is responsible for shifting light patterns and the change in seasons. In this activity students will learn that the Earth is tilted on a consistent axis and know the reason why the length of days differs throughout the year.

Carbon cycle activity to demonstrate how carbon moves throughout the atmosphere. The activity ends with a discussion of how humans impact the carbon cycle.

This resource from MIT includes a 14-minute podcast on the relationship between agriculture and climate change from a NASA scientist, and additional activities that support an understanding of using maps and case-studies from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) to understand agroecology concepts. Students learn about how farmers are changing land-use practices to have a less negative impact on climate change, and how climate change may alter the nutritional quality of crops.

Introductory video of greenhouse gases, how they are observed, and why they are important.

This resource is an activity book containing multiple activities for students to learn about climate resilience in engaging ways. Activities can be completed in sequence or activities can be pulled out and done independently.

This visualization provides a basic overview of the water cycle. Users can move their mouse or finger over any of the labelled boxes and click to obtain more information.

In this activity, students explore resilience toolkits to better understand their value. Students then draw upon these toolkits to design a resilience plan for their school campus as the culminating task of the larger Project Resilience.