Teaching Tips

• Teachers should be aware of students who may have been personally impacted by wildfire as this topic can be difficult. See the CLEAN page Mental Health - How to teach climate change towards empowerment
• It will be helpful for the teacher to review the graphs and videos ahead of time.
• Also note the student hand-outs, teacher slides, and resource folder provided to go along with this lesson.
• The different jigsaw station questions vary in difficulty and higher order thinking. Students may be grouped according to level, or teachers may hybridize groups to encourage peer mentoring.
• This activity encourages students to start thinking about how to prepare for a wildfire.
• This lesson can also be connected to a wildfire game that is linked on the lesson website and can be found here https://cires.colorado.edu/outreach/resources/game/heart-force-wildfire-game.

About the Content

• This lesson explores the causes, risks, and trends associated with wildfires using data available from a variety of resources. It also has students explore fire safety, and how to prepare for, respond to, and rebound from a wildfire.
• A wide variety of background information and resources are provided for students and teachers to dig deep into the topic.
• Resource developed in collaboration with expert scientists - no CLEAN expert science review was needed.

About the Pedagogy

• The lesson follows the 5E learning model, and encourages students to develop their own understandings from the scientific data that they analyze.
• Most of the lesson is accomplished using online resources and could be facilitated in a virtual/hybrid format, and will likely appeal to students who enjoy utilizing online resources.
• Students will need some previous experience interpreting and understanding scientific graphs.
• The teacher guide is organized clearly, and links to external resources and data. Websites are all provided in the lesson, making it easy for a teacher to navigate.
• Student worksheets, teacher slides, materials lists, standards alignment, learning goals, guiding questions, and key vocabulary are all provided.
• Jigsaw and mind mapping used.

• This resource engages students in using scientific data.
  See other data-rich activities

Technical Details/Ease of Use

• All links are active and current as of the time of review. No software is needed other than access to the internet.
• Lesson materials (student worksheets, slides, videos, graphs, etc.) are either provided or are website links. Lots of background information and resources are provided.
• Because links to online resources are also provided in the student worksheets, prep time on the teacher's part should be minimal.
• Materials included in both PDF and Google Drive formats.

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