K12 Curriculum
Climate Champions curriculum takes a local focus on a global challenge.
SCIENCE
Explore phenomena, understand the science, engage with solutions, and integrate Indigenous knowledge with units created by Climate Champions Teacher Leaders.
These units for secondary science align with NGSS, center student learning, use 5E pedagogy (Engage, Explore, Explain, Evaluate, Elaborate), include strategies for English learners, integrate standards and practices for math and language arts, and can be adapted for other disciplines.
LAND IMPACTS
Middle School
Learning Target:
- Students will be developing questions and connecting their emotions to the background gained about wildfires.
- Students will conduct research to answer the questions they generated and share aloud their findings to the class.
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Learning Target:
- Students will be able to predict that higher moisture levels will result in the lower rates of burn.
- Students will be able to predict that the increased level of dryness will also result in increased rate of burn.
- Students will be able to connect moisture level and dryness to influencing the type of fuel that can intensify wildfires.
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Learning Target:
- Students will be able to analyze and interpret data about temperature, rainfall and wildfires, to ask questions about how wildfires are connected to climate change.
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Learning Target:
- Students will make a connection between the rise in CO2 levels over time and climate change — the rise in temperatures, lack of rainfall, and increase in wildfires. Slides connect students to wildfires as both an effect and additional cause of climate change.
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Learning Target:
- Students will be able to synthesize information from the unit to create a commitment to reduce their impact on wildfires.
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OCEAN IMPACTS
High School
Learning Target:
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Students will be able to understand how hurricanes form and how scientists use technology to forecast and prepare for hurricanes.
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Learning Target:
- Students will be able to analyze hurricane and tropical cyclone data to make conclusions about how ocean warming affects these weather events.
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Learning Target:
- Students will be able to design a solution that mitigates a negative effect of hurricanes.
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High School
Learning Target:
- Students will understand that the Earth’s oceans are absorbing most of the heat being trapped on Earth.
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Learning Target:
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Students will Understand the science behind sea-level rise and how it impacts coastal communities.
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Learning Target:
- Students will understand that sea-level rise is occurring based on short and long-term data.
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Learning Target:
- Students will understand that when water warms, it expands and takes up more space. Thermal expansion increases the volume that ocean water takes up, leading to sea-level rise.
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Learning Target:
- Students will understand that “sea level is rising, in part, because melting glaciers on land are adding more water to Earth’s oceans. Glaciers – large sheets of ice and snow – exist on land all year long.”
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Learning Target:
- Students will understand that coastal communities and island nations are impacted by sea level rise through storm surge, inundation, erosion, and flooding.
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Learning Target:
- Students will understand three strategies for adapting to sea level rise: protect, accommodate, retreat.
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Learning Target:
- Students will deepen their understanding of sea level rise by writing arguments focused on impacted communities and possible solutions.
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High School
Learning Target:
- Students will explore how albedo contributes to ocean warming and propose an argument based on evidence to indicate how oceans absorb heat energy.
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Learning Target:
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Students will conduct an investigation and use computational skills to determine the effects of ocean warming on fish and marine species.
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Learning Target:
- Students will analyze and interpret sea surface temperature, biodiversity and coral bleaching data and models to determine the impacts of ocean warming on kelp forests and coral reefs.
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Learning Target:
- Students will synthesize information and create a solution in the form of a public service announcement to educate and inform their community on how to prevent, mitigate and adapt to climate change.
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CLIMATE SOLUTIONS
High School
Learning Target:
- Students will be able to recognize that there are multiple solutions at multiple scales to help mitigate climate change.
- Students will be able to summarize the 10 solutions to climate change proposed by “Bending the Curve.”
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Learning Target:
- Students will be able to identify ecosystem services that trees provide.
- Students will understand the carbon sequestration services that trees provide.
- Students will be able to model quantified ecocsystem services of tree species.
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Learning Target:
- Students will be able to formulate an estimate for the amount of carbon dioxide that Balboa Park removes from the atmosphere annually by investigating a section of the urban forest from the park and relate to the emissions from motor vehicles.
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Learning Target:
- Students will be able to explain how restoring coastal wetlands and reducing food waste contribute to climate change mitigation.
- Students will be able to give an example of a local project that has successfully restored coastal wetlands or reduced food waste.
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Learning Target:
- Students will be able to propose three realistic strategies to mitigate climate change that could be implemented at the individual, household, school, or community level.
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Climate Change, Data Science, and Computing
Unit: Climate Change, Data Science, and Computing
High School
Learning Targets:
- Students will be able to describe information that can be extracted from data.
- Students will be create data visualizations to help others better understand real-world phenomena.
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Learning Targets:
- Students will be able to describe information that can be extracted from data.
- Students will be able to create data visualizations to help others better understand real-world phenomena.
- Students will be able to extract information from data using a program.
Learning Targets:
- Students will be able to explain how knowledge can be generated from data.
- Students will be able to select data collection tools and techniques to generate data sets that support a claim or communicate information.
- Students will be able to refine computational models to better represent the relationships among different elements of data collected from a phenomenon or process.
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Learning Targets:
- Students will be able to describe information that can be extracted from data.
- Students will be able to explain how people participate in problem-solving processes at scale.
- Students will be able to use data analysis tools and techniques to identify patterns in data representing complex systems
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Learning Targets:
- Students will be able to create data visualizations to help others better understand real-world phenomena.
- Students will be able to implement and apply an algorithm.
- Students will be able to explain how knowledge can be generated from data.
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HUMANITIES
These free open-education resources, collected and curated by Climate Champions Youth Leaders and coded to standards, are relevant for use in Humanities, History, Social Sciences, and Arts classes.