C-Change Secretariat (Canada) www.coastalchange.ca C-Change Secretariat (Caribbean) Telfer School of Management, c/o Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of University of Ottawa Social & Economic Studies (SALISES) 55 Laurier Avenue East University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Ottawa ON K1N 6N5 Canada Trinidad and Tobago, West Indies Tel: (613) 562-5800 Post 2933 Telephone: (868) 662-6965 Email: [email protected] E-mail : [email protected]
Alexander Jonathan Clarke, Research Associate C-Change
Telfer School of Management, University of Ottawa Telephone: (519) 880-8834; email: [email protected]
C-Change Working Paper January 2012
DRAFT
Published by the C-Change Secretariat (Canada) Telfer School of Management, University of Ottawa
C-Change ICURA Working Paper Series No. 39 This document is prepared as a public discussion document among C-Change communities as part of the C-Change ICURA Project 2009-2015 (www.coastalchange.ca) and with the permission of the C-Change Secretariat (Canada). This paper has not been subjected to peer review or other review processes and does not necessarily represent the
position of individual C-Change Community Partners or researchers. This work is presented to encourage debate and enhance awareness of environmental change among coastal communities in Canada and the Caribbean.
Correspondence on this paper should be directed to the C-Change Secretariat, c/o C-Change Administrator, Telfer School of Management, University of Ottawa,
The C-Change coastal communities in Canada and the Carribean have identified the effects of both sea level rise and the increasing frequency and severity of storm surge events as threats to their infrastructure and communities. There are systems and methods to help mitigate these effects in the future however, as important as improving upon existing infrastructure may be, it is difficult to ensure that the community as a whole sees the value and importance of such improvements without educating the members of that community as to the risks and dangers, and how they are growing over time. In this interest, it is not adequate to provide information to those adults who are already aware of the issue and interested in responding to it, education of the community as a whole must take place at a more basic level. This project seeks to develop scholastic programs, within the existing school curricula, that provide students with enough information and hands-on study to insure that they can recognize the combined threats of sea level rise and storm surge events as not just a textbook entry to be memorized, but as an immediate and local concern that is entirely relevant to their own communities. These issues are not ones that can be solved in the short term, and ensuring that the future leaders of our communities are aware of and educated about them from a young age has long-reaching implications regarding the creation and management of current and future systems to prepare communities for the impending changes they face.
2. Core Principles
The lesson plans created for this project were designed to be used in classrooms both in Canada and the Caribbean, as well as providing teachers with a framework that was both strong enough to stand on its own merits as well as flexible enough to adjust to their specific requirements. In accomplishing this goal, several core design principles had to be executed throughout.
The first of these principles was to base these plans directly on existing curricula. In
doing so, the teachers the plans are intended for have a minimal amount of effort required to implement these plans into their classrooms. As well, teachers typically begin their unit planning with the curriculum, and from that point try and locate or develop plans to meet the curriculum requirements. Seeking resources that fit those curriculum requirements adequately can be challenging, especially if those resources were not developed with such curricula in mind to begin with. As such, a majority of available content that teachers can locate may have excellent ideas for tools or resources a teacher can use, but often the entire lesson plan must be rewritten to include additional curriculum requirements or to exclude sections which teach material that is not relevant to the curriculum expectations. For those providing the lesson plans, who have a specific message they are trying to communicate in doing so, this often means this message is
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lost in the rewriting. In tying the lesson plans directly to curriculum goals, this effect can be mitigated to a significant degree, and by ensuring the plan covers as many specific curriculum goals as is feasible in so short a lesson, it allows teachers to feel more comfortable using the plan in its entirety rather than trying to adjust it to fit in more content due to a lack of available classroom time.
The second core principle was a simplicity of resources. Teachers in different
communities often have wildly different resources available to them. In some schools, even resources as simple as a paper handout must be carefully budgeted throughout the school year. In designing these plans, the only assumption regarding resources was that the teachers would have access to the Internet, as this is how they will be made available to begin with. Aside from that one assumption, each plan was designed to be self-inclusive, requiring as little in the way of additional resources as possible. This provides teachers with limited resource availability to use the plans freely in their classroom without needing to adjust them to account for included resources they cannot provide. However, in addition there are multiple additional electronic resources included, both for teachers to use in front of the class via a projection system as well as individual hands-on resources for teachers who can get computer access for their students directly. These additional resources allow those teachers who do have greater access to in-class features to make use of these resources without needing to change the plan to include them, or spend time trying to locate them. By both designing the plans to require minimal resources as well as including multiple optional resources, the resulting lesson plans are much more broadly applicable to more classrooms in a wider variety of economic backgrounds.
The third core principle was designed not with making the plans easy and desirable for
teachers to implement into their units, but to make the plans engaging for students across a wide variety of personalities. Teaching in a public education system has an obligation to the students in a way that is not necessarily true of private or post-secondary education; primary and secondary school students are not there by choice, and indeed in most countries are required by law to attend and have the right to be educated. This places the obligation on the teacher to ensure the content they provide to their students is interesting to as broad a range of personalities as they can arrange, to ensure that ideally every student can find something in a lesson to latch on to. To maintain this principle, the lessons were designed to address multiple learning styles within each lesson. One particular paradigm used by teachers for this purpose is the concept of “learning styles”; that some students are more visual learners, others more auditory, and others still more kinesthetic. In practice, no given student is one specific style all the time; most are a mix of all three to varying degrees, and where they may have gotten the most out of visual information in the last lesson, a more kinesthetic approach in the current one may be what they need. In these lesson plans, each learning style was included to at least some degree, both to ensure the lessons catered to every student's potential needs, as well as removing any need from the teacher to design additional lessons to reinforce these plans in additional styles.
3. Methodology
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In educational systems around the globe, changing the required curriculum is a long and painstaking process. Changes to existing or new curricula must be approved through lengthy discussion periods, and there must be solid research attached with adequate material to support its conclusion, otherwise the inertia of bureaucracy will tend to encourage the curriculum boards to continue using the curricula they have already approved. However, within any given curriculum there is usually a fair amount of personal leeway for individual teachers to tune the content towards specific topics. For instance, in the Ontario Grade 11 Environmental Science curriculum, there is a section titled “Scientific Solutions to Contemporary Environmental Challenges”. This section of the curriculum has a fairly broad basis, as the curriculum does not specify which environmental challenges should be examined in any detail; it provides some possible examples but leaves the actual selection and individual planning of each to the teachers themselves. This creates an opportunity for C-Change, as it can achieve immediate results by approaching teachers directly with lesson planning materials that fit within the existing curricula. This bypasses any need to campaign the Board of Education for changes to the curricula themselves, a process which can take years once initiated and for which there is no guarantee of success. If the lesson plans are designed with curriculum goals in mind, teachers will be much more likely to see it as a valuable resource and adopt it into their classrooms. The curricula in question also provide constraints and guidelines; teachers have some leeway within those guidelines to choose certain specific subject material, but must ensure the overall lesson is tuned towards the specific curriculum goals at all times. In designing these kinds of materials, these guidelines must not simply be considered as limitations, but as specific goals that the plans themselves must attain. Given the amount of material teachers have to cover, and the number of students they must cover it with, a lesson plan cannot simply pick and choose one or two of these curriculum goals for any given class, especially in inter-related topics such as Science and History, instead each lesson is designed to touch on as many curriculum goals as possible, and to teach to those goals multiple times across the course of a given unit. This allows for the teacher to ensure the material is not only touched on, but reinforced, and reinforced in different ways each time. As such, these plans were created to touch on as many of the curriculum goals as were feasible to include, rather than focusing on too narrow a selection. By broadening those goals, it is much more likely that a teacher will see these plans as a good addition to their current units, reinforcing many of the other lessons they will have taught in the unit. Teachers are often wary about using lesson plans they have not created themselves, as many of these resources are not directly tied to their curriculum in this way, but also because they are often proscriptive rather than descriptive, giving a very specific lesson on a narrow topic with materials that must be used to provide the lesson. It is not unusual for such a lesson plan to require 2-3 handouts per class, and be designed with the assumption that those materials are in the hands of the students, and as a result many teachers may find the plans too constraining to adapt for their classroom. Schools have widely varying budgets, both between different regions and even within a given region. One school may provide its teachers with unlimited photocopying, while another twenty minutes away may have to limit teachers to 10,000 copies a year before they must begin paying out-of-pocket for additional paper and toner. At 25 students in a classroom, a 10,000 copy limit quickly reduces to a fairly harsh constraint; 10,000 copies means 400 pieces of paper per student, per year. In Ontario, for the 2011-2012 school year, there
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are 196 school days. If a school has seven forty-minute classes in a day, this means a teacher at this school would be able to include a one-page handout in only two classes a day. By constructing these lesson plans to not require much additional resources, this allows teachers in any school to adopt these plans into their units. By providing additional optional resources, it provides a structure for teachers to adapt the plan for their own classroom and its available resources. Combined, this allows the lesson plans created to be broadly applicable by teachers in almost any school. This descriptive, rather than proscriptive, structure ensures the teacher can make use of the plans without feeling as if they're merely repeating someone else's words, and also without having to rewrite the entire lesson plan to fit their own specific needs.
4. Sample Application
The lesson plans included in Appendices A and B are written from the perspective of a relatively standard Ontario classroom setting as a baseline; this was chosen both because C-Change is based in Ontario, but also because the Ontario Curriculum is being used internationally in Canadian-run schools around the world. However, many other curricula are very similar, especially across Canada. Here, we will consider how a classroom in Arichat, Nova Scotia might use the existing lesson plan as a framework for their own classroom lesson, using their own local resources. Herein, some assumptions will be made regarding access to resources, however these are being made to create a setting to demonstrate possible applications of the lesson plans, not to accurately portray any actual Arichat classroom. The assumptions will be as follows;
The class is a Grade 4 class at École Beau-port in Arichat, Nova Scotia. The class has remaining budget allowance for a field trip via school bus, but no funds to
go towards entry fees. The class has limited photocopy privileges, capped at 10,000 copies per teacher per year,
but no limit on paper per se. The school has an available computer projector, but no in-class computers outside the
library. The teacher has a laptop of her own that can be used with the projector. The classes will be 45 minutes in length.
Given these restrictions, the teacher needs to find a lesson to cover the Nova Scotia Life Science Curriculum for Grade 4, on the subject of Habitats, that grade's topic for that subject in Grade 4, in Nova Scotia. This is almost identical to the Ontario Curriculum's Grade 4 Science topic of Habitats and Communities, both in subject matter and in curriculum goals specifically. On finding the C-Change lesson plan on the website, she sees that it's both on exactly the subject matter she needs to teach, as well as including specific curriculum goals that the lesson will cover, which can easily be equated with the Nova Scotia curriculum goals. The material requirements seem achievable; there are no handouts required to teach the lesson, no books required that her local school or public libraries may not have access to. She has the budget for a
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field trip, and Arichat is a coastal community; a bus ride to a local beach is a fairly short time investment required, meaning minimal impact to the rest of her school day. Having chosen to use the lesson plan, she assembles what she needs to conduct the lesson. Field trip permission slips are sent home with the students, but given that they are not traveling far and no additional entry fees are required there is little concern that parents will take issue with the trip. Some paper supplies are set aside, and she makes sure to sign out the projector for the day of the trip. On the day of the trip, knowing that 40 minutes is likely too little time for the trip to the beach with all the commensurate rules discussion and travel time and organization that will be required, she sets aside two consecutive classroom sessions just after lunch, ending on the afternoon recess, allowing for an extra time buffer in case there is any delay. As students get back into the classroom after lunch, she turns on the projector, and plays the NASA NOW Minute Youtube clip included in the lesson plan resources, and visible in Figure 1. This clip is oriented towards elementary levels, and in roughly a minute, gives a quick overview
of what causes climate change and thus sea level rise.
Figure 1: NASA NOW Minute screen capture
While this isn't directly related to the curriculum in question, it sets the stage for it by giving the students a quick rundown of current climate changes and why they are occurring. By providing this before the class really begins, students will not be prepared to take notes, and so will simply be paying attention. With students now paying attention and primed to get started, she changes the screen to a second web page, the flood map program at flood.firetree.net also included in the lesson plan resources. Here, she has the program already preset to focus on Arichat itself, with the sea level rise toggle set to “0m”, showing normal coastline levels, as in Figure 3.
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Figure 3: Firetree.net Sea Level at 20m Figure 2: Firetree.net Sea Level at 0m
From this point, she asks students to guess how much the sea level would have to rise to reach the school, in the center of the map. After fielding a few guesses, and showing where the shoreline would end up, she ends up at the 20m visual in Figure 3. If desired, and if the students are interested, this interactive tool can be zoomed in or out and show similar data anywhere around the world. At this point, the students make their way to the waiting school bus, and take the short trip to a nearby rocky shore, reminding the students to think about how sea level rise might affect the beach they're about to visit and the animals and plants that live there. Here each student chooses a plant or animal to study, as per the lesson plan. Each has a piece of paper to draw the organism, as well as to write down some observations. After spending about twenty minutes at the location, they return to the classroom, and make their way to the library to get a head start on researching their chosen plant or animal. As far as time goes, a usual scenario would involve about ten minutes at the beginning with the hook and the website, about ten minutes spent organizing for the bus trip and reviewing the field trip rules, twenty minutes at the actual site, five minutes to collect everyone and get back on the bus, and five minutes of travel time each way, taking in total about 55 minutes to an hour, leaving roughly half an hour to organize the move to the library and get some research done before recess, leaving plenty of wiggle room for unexpected circumstances. The second day, students would be split into groups, picking up halfway through the second class of the lesson plan. Class would then move to the library again, to have ready access to research materials, and each group would then build their food web for their chosen plants and animals, conducting extra research as needed to fill them out. After spending the first half of the class on this, they would spend the second half discussing three threats to their food web. The teacher will remind the students about the video they watched last class before the field trip, and that they can use sea level rise as one of the threats in question. By the end of this class, each group should have their food web finished, complete with three threats to the food web and how those threats would potentially impact each organism therein. These would be handed in to be assessed, and returned for next class.
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The third day, students would rejoin their groups, but remain in the classroom. On this day, they would be considering two major questions; how would the changes they saw as threats affect their own community, and in what ways could they and/or their community act to protect the environment they studied and try to either mitigate or prevent those threats from emerging at all. Each group would work on each question one at a time, followed by some class discussion about the different threats and responses every group came up with. Depending on the class, this can easily fill the entire class session, but if there's any extra time, the teacher can bring in the question of storm surge events on top of sea level rise, and how those would impact on any of the food webs in question.
Every student here has had a chance to get hands-on during the field trip, to explore visual research materials and make visual observations on the field trip, and engage in spirited class discussion, covering auditory learning. As well, by tying these concepts directly into their community, it brings an immediacy to the material that helps students to really get involved and interested in learning it, a factor both the Ontario and Nova Scotia curricula recognize and include as an expectation directly.
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5. References Ontario Ministry of Education, The Ontario Curriculum Grades 1-8: Science and Technology, 2007 Ontario Ministry of Education, The Ontario Curriculum, Grades 9 and 10: Science, 2008 (Revised) Ontario Ministry of Education, The Ontario Curriculum, Grades 11 and 12: Science, 2008 (Revised)
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Appendix A: Lesson Plan #1, Grade 4: Habitats and Communities
Title and Focus: Grade 4: Habitats and Communities A Look at Coastal Habitats via Food Webs This lesson will focus particularly on coastal habitats, involving a field trip to a local coastal zone habitat, developing food webs for the plants and animals the students can find at the site, and then discussing the potential risk factors due to sea level rise, storm surge events, and other natural and human-created factors which threaten these ecosystems.
Overall Expectations (Ontario Curriculum): Analyse the effects of human activities on habitats and communities Investigate the interdependence of plants and animals within specific habitats and
communities Demonstrate an understanding of habitats and communities and the relationships among
the plants and animals that live in them.
Specific Expectations (Ontario Curriculum): Analyse the positive and negative impacts of human interactions with natural habitats
and communities, taking different perspectives into account, and evaluate ways of minimizing the negative impacts.
Identify reasons for the depletion or extinction of a plant or animal species, evaluate the impacts on the rest of the natural community, and propose possible actions for preventing such depletions or extinctions from happening.
Follow established safety procedures for working with soils and natural materials Build food chains consisting of different plants and animals, including humans. Use scientific inquiry/research skills to investigate ways in which plants and animals in
a community depend on features of their habitat to meet important needs Use appropriate science and technology vocabulary, including habitat, population,
community, adaptation, and food chain, in oral and written communication Use a variety of forms to communicate with different audiences and for a variety of
purposes Demonstrate an understanding of habitats as areas that provide plants and animals with
the necessities of life. Demonstrate an understanding of food chains as systems in which energy from the sun
is transferred to producers (plants) and then to consumers (animals) Identify factors that affect the ability of plants and animals to survive in a specific
habitat Demonstrate an understanding of a community as a group of interacting species sharing
a common habitat. Identify animals that are carnivores, herbivores, or omnivores. Describe structural adaptations that allow plants and animals to survive in specific
habitats.
Hook/Intro: This lesson involves a field trip to a local beach or coastal region, so an
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additional “hook” isn't necessary
Materials: Permission slips if required in your school/board for field trips Budget allocation for bus travel to reach the beach Paper/notebooks for students to record notes Optional; a camera to take on-site pictures of the organisms students select. This can
either be a school-owned camera, or a student's cell phone camera, or their own personal cameras. This adds additional requirements in needing to develop film or have computer access to use digital images, but adds to the experience overall.
Optional: this lesson can also be done without the field trip component if there are no coastal regions nearby or the budget cannot cover a trip. In such a case, the trip can be replaced by directed research into local environments.
Strategy: Class 1:
Students will be going on a field trip to a local beach or other coastal environment, such as a salt marsh, tidal pool or rocky shore.
Reinforce on students that the goal is to have a minimal impact on the environment; they are free to collect discarded shells and such but are not to disturb living organisms, just observe them.
Each student will explore the environment and choose one organism they can find to conduct their research on. If they wish to explore in pairs or small groups, this is fine, but each student must select their own organism. Emphasize that both plants and animals should be selected, and they must pick an organism they discover.
Students may recognize their organism, or not. Regardless, they should observe the environment it lives in and record what they notice in their notebooks/paper. If they cannot identify it, this will be part of their goal when they return and begin research. This stage is just to find something “neat”, not to know everything about it.
Each student should report their chosen organism to the teacher when they make their decision. The teacher should do their best to ensure there is minimal overlap; depending on the coastal habitat you are in, there may be a limited number of options, so be prepared to provide suggestions. Particularly, students are likely to trend towards picking animals of some kind; remind them plants are necessary too.
Once each student has selected an organism, they are to observe its environment and behaviour, and make some hypotheses about how it survives in that environment; what does it eat, how does it defend itself from predators, etc.
Some examples of good choices would be; sand dollars, clams, mussels, crabs, beach grasses, seaweeds, algaes, sea stars, sea urchins, fishes (that they can locate and observe), shore birds, etc. Each can be split up into specific species; if one student wants to do hermit crabs and another do green crabs, that's perfectly fine.
Class 2:
Students will be researching their organism in the school library. They're also welcome to conduct additional research at home if they wish, but it is not strictly necessary.
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For the first half of the class, roughly, students are to find as much factual information on their organism as they can. Necessary points are; identify the organism, whether it is a plant or animal, and if animal whether it is an herbivore, carnivore, or omnivore. They should be able to locate further information as well.
In the second half of the class, the students will be grouped up into groups of 5-6. Ensure that each group has a mix of organisms; these groups can be worked up beforehand as the student's choices were made the class before.
These groups will then construct a “food web” for their organisms. The organisms of each of the students must be included, but the web should be expanded on from that base point to include any other organisms they can come up with. Each group should have a sheet of paper to draw this web on, with some markers or crayons or coloured pencils to identify the students' particular organisms among the web. For each organism they list, make connections to others, showing which organisms eat which others. The students may grab additional research resources to add to their web as they go, but it should be finished by the end of the class.
Class 3:
Students will rejoin their groups from the prior day and get their food web. Each group will have some time to work together to determine three threats to their
food web, some possible events that could cause the web to break down. These events can be either natural or human-created, and students should strive to include at least one of each. In particular, sea level rise should be discussed by each group, and how such a change would affect the coastal creatures and their habitat.
In addition, groups should take some time to discuss how such changes to the coastal community would in turn affect their own community. How would a change in the coastal species effect greater changes in the ocean and their own community?
Each group will also discuss and research ways in which they can help prevent such issues from threatening that environment; in what ways could they and/or their community act to protect the environment in question and avoid these threats from emerging in the first place?
If time allows, the students should also be encouraged to discuss how storms would affect any of these circumstances, since storms can bring even higher water levels than normal. Could a storm surge push the habitat past a critical point, damaging it beyond repair?
Leading Questions: What is your organism? What does it eat? What eats it in return? How does it defend itself? How does it rely on its habitat? How vulnerable is it to changes in its habitat? How does it relate to other organisms chosen by other students? Does it prey on them?
Is it preyed on by them? Does it compete with them for food? Does it have a cooperative relationship with any of them?
Where do people fit in the food web? We're a part of the ecosystem as well, after all.
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Closure: The remaining class time in Class 3 will be used for each group to present their food
web and organisms to the class as a whole, as well as what threats they considered, how they think those threats would affect the organisms in their food web and their habitat, and how they think both everyone and the community at large could work together to minimize or eliminate these threats entirely.
Assessment: Assessment will be done via the attached rubric
Rubric: Level 4 Level 3 Level 2 Level 1 Student's food web was complex and had both a large number of organisms as well as many different interconnections
Student's food web was well-designed, having a good number of organisms and many relevant interconnections
Student's food web expanded on the basic organisms, and had several relevant interconnections for each organism.
Student's food web did not include many organisms beyond the student's own and/or had limited interconnections listed, missing several important connections
Student's research and knowledge of their chosen organism was exceptional and showed great insight and effort on their part
Student's research into their organism was thorough and involved multiple sources of information to fill out their understanding.
Student's research into their organism established a reasonable understanding of the organism and its place in its habitat.
Student's research into their organism did not extend past the basic necessary questions provided.
Student showed great care and conscientiousness during the field trip, and made several insightful and useful observations about their chosen organism and its environment
Student was cautious and careful in their observations and conduct during the field trip, and made good and useful observations
Student avoided harming the habitat as they observed their chosen organism, and took some useful notes
Student was unable to abide by the rules during the field trip and risked damaging the habitat in some way
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Appendix B: Lesson Plan #2, Grade 11: Environmental Science
Title and Focus: Grade 11: Environmental Science: Scientific Solutions to Contemporary Environmental Challenges Researching the Risks and Countermeasures of Local Sea Level Rise This lesson is a research project intended to get students involved in hands-on research into coastal sea level rise in their local community, determining exactly what areas are at risk and get an idea for how much damage sea level rise could cause to their communities in the near future.
Overall Expectations (Ontario Curriculum) Analyse social and economic issues related to an environmental challenge, and how
societal needs infuence scientifc endeavours related to the environment; Investigate a range of perspectives that have contributed to scientific knowledge about
the environment, and how scientifc knowledge and procedures are applied to address contemporary environmental problems;
Demonstrate an understanding of major contemporary environmental challenges and how we acquire knowledge about them.
Specific Expectations (Ontario Curriculum): Analyse, on the basis of research, social and economic issues related to a particular
environmental challenge and to efforts to address it Analyse ways in which societal needs or demands have influenced scientific endeavours
related to the environment Use appropriate terminology related to the application of scientific knowledge and
procedures to environmental issues, including, but not limited to: fact, inference, paradigm, objectivity, and causality
Investigate, through research or using case studies or computer simulation, how scientific knowledge and procedures are applied to address a particular contemporary environmental issue
Use a research process to investigate how evidence, theories, and paradigms reflecting a range of perspectives have contributed to our scientific knowledge about the environment and communicate their findings
Use a research process to locate a media report on a contemporary environmental issue, summarize its arguments, and assess their validity from a scientific perspective
Identify some major contemporary environmental challenges, and explain their causes and effects
Describe how scientists use a variety of processes to solve problems and answer questions related to the environment
Explain how new evidence affects scientific knowledge about the environment and leads to modifications of theory and/or shifts in paradigms
Explain how an environmental challenge has led to advances in science or technology Describe a variety of human activities that have led to environmental problems and/or
contributed to their solution
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Hook/Intro: Show a short video clip if possible, such as the one available on Youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2fg5PaHcUI&feature=related , showing the effect of sea level rise to coastlines. This video in particular is useful because it also includes how many people would be flooded out of their homes at that degree of sea level rise. An alternative would be to have students take a local topographical map image, and plot out where the new coastline would be after three increases in sea level, such as 3, 6, and 9 meters, or 5, 10, and 15. See how much of the local area would become flooded.
Materials: Video display equipment (for the above hook, optional) Access to digital camera equipment, whether school-owned or brought by students.
Many students may have cell phones with cameras included, which would be sufficient. This is optional, if the intent is to contribute to Volunteer Geographic Information systems.
Strategy: This lesson is oriented around developing a research project, to be handed in, on the
subject of sea level rise and storm events, and how both can combine to affect their own community, in the way in which New Orleans was recently impacted by Hurricane Katrina.
Students may work alone, or in groups of 2-3, however groups will be expected to turn in commensurately more thorough work. The subject is a large one, so each student should be expected to focus on 1 major aspect to focus their research on, or two inter-related aspects at most.
One recommended component, should students have access to cameras and wish to participate, would be to produce and contribute volunteer geographic information to a group looking for such information for the purpose of studying sea level rise impact. This would then be rolled into their paper as their topic to discuss, looking at the importance of such data and how their data will contribute to the study in question. This can include photographs by using some markers such as bright masking tape (chosen as it can be easily removed and will cause no damage to the buildings being marked) to mark a certain predetermined elevation on local buildings and collecting those photographs as evidence of how high the waters would be with, say, a 5 meter increase in sea level. This would involve either some homework by the students themselves, or a class trip if the entire class has chosen to participate and there is enough budget to allow for transportation if necessary (depending on the location of the school and how close they are to the coastal region).
Possible other topics include, but would not be limited to, subjects such as; ◦ the causes of climate change leading to sea level rise ◦ what kind of damage would be likely from such sea level rise and how much of
humanity is at risk due to living in coastal regions ◦ how sea level rise would affect their own community in particular ◦ methods that can be used to adjust to sea level rise (such as dykes and levees) and
their strengths and weaknesses ◦ how storm-based events like the storm surges that raise water levels or tsunami
waves can make even adequate and normally reliable defenses inadequate The paper should be able to look at at least three different issues related to their specific
topic or findings, and tie them back together in the conclusion. Length will likely vary between classes and how much importance the teacher expects to place on the work, but a suggested length would be 3-4 double spaced pages, roughly 800-1000 words.
In the first class, introduce the topic with the “hook”, and move to the library. Students
can split up and try to determine their topic, and get some preliminary research done.
Leading Questions: What is “climate change”? What is a “storm surge”? How are they changing as time goes on? How does climate change contribute to both sea level rise and storm surge events? How does sea level rise threaten to affect your community? What is the economic impact of sea level rise or storm surge events, both direct and
indirect (money spent on levees/dykes/breakwaters/etc, moving buildings or roads out of flooded areas, etc)?
What is the cultural impact? How do rising sea levels and storm surge events threaten to affect emergency response
systems such as fire/police/ambulance services? Consider how they were affected in New Orleans during and immediately after Hurricane Katrina, for instance.
How can you, personally, and your community, adapt to these coming changes?
Closure: In the final classes, students will be making a brief 3-4 minute presentation on their
topic, in the style of a statement in a debate. Their goal is to try and convince the class of their conclusion, providing the evidence they located to shore it up. Groups will be expected to have longer presentations, and represent each member fairly equally. Given the duration of the presentations and the size of the class, this may stretch over multiple class periods.
Assessment: Assess via the rubric provided
Rubric: Level 4 Level 3 Level 2 Level 1 Student's research was thorough and pulled from multiple sources, including some primary research of
Student's research was thorough and selected appropriate material from secondary sources to
Student's research was adequate but could have pulled from more sufficient sources or better supported
Student's research was limited and failed to support their position adequately.
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C-Change Working Paper
their own support their point their argument
Student's paper was well-written, expressing both the logic of their argument and their conviction in its veracity
Student's paper was written well, their language supporting their argument and conclusion.
Student's paper was written adequately well but lacked somewhat in the “voice” used; was either too authoritative or too casual
Student's paper showed multiple grammatical or other language issues, and did not possess a cohesive “voice” that communicated their conclusion
Student's chosen topics supported each other and their conclusion in an interesting and solidly supported manner, making their argument cohesive and confident
Student's chosen topics contained a common thread that came together for the conclusion, supporting their final statement
Student's chosen topics were only somewhat connected, and did not fully support their conclusion on their own.
Student's topics were unconnected to each other or irrelevant to the topic at hand, and failed to support their conclusion.
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C-Change Working Paper
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Appendix C: Additional Classroom/Teacher Resources Online Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4YUieDlAuM - Video of computer simulations of how sea level rise would flood certain major coastal cities. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-m14be9vVk - Video showing worldwide sea level rise, includes population affected http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRa_yq8238g - Computer simulations showing sea level rise around the world http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXOiggsDKfI – Footage of storm surge waters near Dalhousie/Campbellton NB. Some objectionable language on the audio at the start. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vp0xPL1vL-s - NASA NOW Minute giving a very brief overview of sea level rise http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kffsux-ifKk - Video debunking some of the common criticisms of sea level rise and climate change science, and clarifying the limitations of certain conservative models http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvSgnU7wfPU – Video from the USGS describing the combined effects of land subsidence and sea level rise http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGi2SSIqIMY - Music video showing both before/after pictures of glaciers showing how far melting has already gone, and demonstrating the difference between how floating ice melt and land-based ice melt have different effects on sea level rise via a repeatable experiment with ice cubes in glasses of water. http://vimeo.com/channels/sealevel – Series of 100+ videos detailing sea level rise impact on various cities around the glove. Each video is a different city, all are produced by the same resource. http://www.ted.com/talks/james_balog_time_lapse_proof_of_extreme_ice_loss.html – TED Talk video regarding time lapse evidence of ice loss, by a photographer Images: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/surge/ - Good overview, w/ images, of storm surge mechanics, including a nice animation Interactive: http://flood.firetree.net/ - Interactive sea level rise map, based off Google Maps, allowing for adjustable views of 0-60m sea level rise worldwide.
