Reviewed by Christine Royce
Assistant Professor of Education
Is the world getting warmer? Is this part of a long time change in the Earth’s climate systems? Forecasting the Future: Exploring Evidence for Global Climate Change is a valuable resource for examining the material and scientific evidence on global warming.
The book begins with up-to-date reference material to provide students and teachers with a background on the topic.
Fourteen interdisciplinary student activities are cross-referenced to this content summary to make them easy to use, even for teachers who are not familiar with current research in this area. The integrated, inquiry-based approach of Forecasting the Future takes climate change beyond traditional meteorology content and allows students to examine this topic in terms of biology (including both plants and animals), the geology of fossil and sedimentation evidence, chemistry, and physics.
Each activity provides a student objective, background information for reading, the procedure for conducting the activity, and follow-up discussion questions. There is a separate page labeled “Teacher’s Guide to the Activity” that provides hints, discusses time requirements, and offers suggestions for discussion questions. As a teacher of Earth science, I found many new and novel activities that could be easily included in an existing curriculum. The book could also serve as a stand-alone curriculum for a 10-week middle school course.
Review posted on 1/22/2001
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