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Understanding Climate Change and the Role of Nature in Creating Resilience
https://www.nature.org/content/dam/tnc/nature/en/documents/nature-lab-lesson-plans/Understanding-Climate-Change-NL.pdf

The Nature Conservancy

This comprehensive resource presents an entire 6 part unit for understanding major themes in climate change including common misperceptions, global and seasonal trends, and disproportionate risk to climate change by category.

This learning activity takes nine 45 minute class periods.

Learn more about Teaching Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness»


Grade Level

Online Readiness

Topics

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

  • Teachers could also bring attention to the types of resources that are being used to support this lesson plan (i.e., from government websites or educational institutions).
  • It may be challenging to plan for this unit within a larger curriculum. This is especially true for non-AP classes in biology, social studies, or an integrated curriculum. This would do well as a part in an AP Environmental Sciences class.

About the Content

  • Students will use resources from the EPA, NASA, and NOAA to dispel climate change myths, collect and interpret data, and explore areas of interest on a map.
  • Students will also use data-driven maps to answer questions about climate model projections and anticipated risk, and explore nature-based solutions to climate problems such as sea-level rise and storm-surge.
  • The presented maps use real historical data from direct and indirect measurements.
  • Comments from expert scientist:
    Scientific Strength: Uses real and realiable climate data and has students intrepret that. There are links to solid interactive resources, and it does a good exploration of CO<sun>2 data on different time scales. Exercises connect climate data to impact and responses to climate change and provide ways for students to explore their own areas, creating personal connections.
    Suggestions: Part of the resource mentions the debate of climate change within the scientific community, which can cause misinformation among students. Also, some of the data can be updated as it is now over 10 years old. Overall, since it looks like this resource is from 2015, it would be worth a thorough re-vamp and update, since key resources and videos are no longer available. Unfortunately, several of the links to US government websites now lead to dead ends.

About the Pedagogy

  • Students will use a variety of online resources, interactive maps, articles, and videos to understand the measurements and effects of climate change.
  • This resource presents information in a logical sequence where each subsequent concept builds on the previous lesson. Students are challenged to do independent research to understand and personalize their understanding of climate change.
  • This is a robust unit of 6 lessons that leads students to conclusions about resilience in the face of current and inevitable climate change scenarios. It is best suited for an AP Environmental Science (APES) course due to both the complexity and detail in the lessons and the length of time needed to get through all 6 lessons.
  • All lessons are tied together so it would be difficult to pick and choose between them, though lesson 6 might be a single lesson if students are already proficient with global climate change factors and dynamics.

Technical Details/Ease of Use

Entered the Collection: June 2025 | Last Reviewed: January 2025

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