Jump to this Activity »
The Incredible Carbon Journey
http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/education/discoverclimate/noaa_activity10_the_incredible_carbon_journey_111213.pdf

NOAA (adapted from Kentucky Association for Environmental Education), Oceanservice.noaa.gov

In this activity, students explore the way that human activities have changed the way that carbon is distributed in Earth's atmosphere, lithosphere, biosphere and hydrosphere.

Lesson takes about 40-60 minutes. Some additional materials are required.

Learn more about Teaching Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness»


Climate Literacy

This Activity builds on the following concepts of Climate Literacy.

Click a topic below for supporting information, teaching ideas, and sample activities.

Energy Literacy

This Activity builds on the following concepts of Energy Literacy.

Click a topic below for supporting information, teaching ideas, and sample activities.

Notes From Our Reviewers The CLEAN collection is hand-picked and rigorously reviewed for scientific accuracy and classroom effectiveness. Read what our review team had to say about this resource below or learn more about how CLEAN reviews teaching materials
Teaching Tips | Science | Pedagogy | Technical Details

Teaching Tips

  • Instead of a 'Game Record' for each player to record their journey at the end of the lesson, students could map out their journey to the 4 different stations for each round and compare and contrast the pattern of their journey between the two.
  • "Want To Do More?" suggestions are good for elaborating on the learning.

About the Content

  • Focus of the activity is how human activities have changed the distribution of carbon among Earth's atmosphere, lithosphere, biosphere, and hydrosphere.
  • Compares the carbon cycle before the Industrial Revolution with the carbon cycle after humans began burning large quantities of fossil fuels.
  • Comments from expert scientist: A neat approach to understanding the carbon cycle, the magnitudes of the flows, and humans--incorporates physical activity and probability. The activity doesn't communicate the size of each stock, only the flows between them--a really important part of the basic carbon cycle concept to communicate.

About the Pedagogy

  • The activity outlines questions for each section of the game, suggesting stopping points for students to think and evaluate what they have done to that point.
  • Provides additional activity ideas such as story boards and graphing the data.
  • Activity is one of 10 in the NOAA activity book Discover Your Changing World with NOAA http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/education/discoverclimate/.

Technical Details/Ease of Use

  • Must build game cubes; templates are provided.

Related URLs These related sites were noted by our reviewers but have not been reviewed by CLEAN

https://serc.carleton.edu/eslabs/carbon/2b.html
Entered the Collection: February 2017 Last Reviewed: May 2015

Jump to this Activity »