STAGE 2: EXPLORE IDEAS RELATING TO CLIMATE CHANGE

The ‘Explore’ phase includes activities in which they can explore the concept or skill. They grapple with the problem or phenomenon and describe it in their own words. This phase allows students to acquire a common set of experiences that they can use to help each other make sense of the new concept or skill.

Explore Step 2.1: Exploring climate change

Suggested Subject Area: Science

Purpose
To provide students with opportunities to develop their understanding of:

• The relationship between the gases in the atmosphere and the Greenhouse Effect
  
• How global warming can change the climate
  
• How climate change can affect people and places
  
• How we can reduce the impacts of climate change.
  

Preparation
You will need:

• Copy of Resource 1.2 for all students
  
• Copy of Resource 1.3 for all students
  
• Small empty plastic bottles
  
• Baking soda or sodium bicarbonate
  
• Vinegar
  
• Balloons
  
• Spoons
  
• Copy of Resource 1.4 for all students
  
• A set of identical thermometers
  
• Clear plastic bottles
  
• Plasticine
  
• Stop watch
  
• Access to the Internet
  

Procedure
Re-introduce students to the concepts about climate change in a practical way.

• Read an article about global warming. Share Resource 1.2 with the class, ask students to exchange questions about things they are not sure about global warming and then create a list of key statements from the article. Simulate global warming too by asking a student to run on the spot and invite other students who are wearing a jacket on the day to place it over the shoulders of the jogging students, thus demonstrating the layers of warmth surrounding the Earth.
  
• Make some carbon dioxide. See Resource 1.3 and explore with the students how a reaction between two different substances – a solid (bicarbonate soda) and a liquid (vinegar) – can create a third new substance such as carbon dioxide gas.  Invite students to contrast the differences between the compound ‘acetic acid’ (vinegar), the compound sodium bicarbonate and carbon dioxide gas. Ask where the gas came from and where it would it go once it was released.
  
• Make a bottled greenhouse. Share Resource 1.4 with the class and investigate how a material can trap radiation from the sun and increase the temperature of a gas within.
  
• Use the climate exchange website at http://climatexchange.aspacnet.org/ to learn more about places and people globally affected by a changing climate. Explore a range of places and people. Ask questions like:
  

            - What is this place like?
            - What do people do here?
            - What is happening in this place?
            - Could this place be anywhere else?
            - How is this place affected by climate change?
            - How are people adapting to changes being experienced?

Next - STEP 2.2: Explore continued