Interesting Climate Change Resource

I really enjoyed this article discussing a classroom activity to investigate the sources of atmospheric carbon dioxide how they each contribute to climate change. I really appreciated that t... See More

I really enjoyed this article discussing a classroom activity to investigate the sources of atmospheric carbon dioxide how they each contribute to climate change. I really appreciated that the article gave all of the information necessary to repeat this activity in my own classroom. I thought it was fantastic that the activity combined literacy, math skills, and science content at a high level for students. I also really enjoyed the way it incorporated the idea of conflicting viewpoints, data interpretation and drawing conclusions with evidence - these are all high level skills that are important for students in high school and beyond. The activity teaches students to do their own research before drawing conclusions on important issues. One downside I could potentially see to this activity is that it is not well scaffolded for struggling students. As a result, it would take quite a while to complete in a classroom where students are not used to performing high level analyses like this. While that, in and of itself, is not necessarily problematic, I don't know that I, personally, would commit that much time to a topic loosely aligned with standards. The North Carolina standards do stress understanding the role of humans in the carbon cycle, but there is not as much emphasis on distinguishing between human and natural contributions to atmospheric carbon dioxide.