On this page:
UGC educators (left to right) Vanessa Brunsing, Henriette Howett, Janet Lee (front), Elisa Prather (back), Sarah Machado, Jessica Bean, Devin Jackson.
The Understanding Global Change Project at UC Berkeley partnered with Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness Network (CLEAN) educators and classroom teachers to construct high school (adaptable for middle school) instructional units and lessons that engage students in UGC Earth System Modeling to explore CLEAN resources and datasets. The National Science Foundation and NOAA funded CLEAN collection houses over 700 free, high-quality teaching and learning resources about climate and energy that have been carefully vetted by scientists and educators.
The UGC materials:
- Address specific high school Next Generation Science Standards, including the Science and Engineering Practices and Cross Cutting Concepts.
- Focus student learning around the explanation of anchoring phenomena, which are Measurable (observable) Changes in the Earth system identified in the UGC Infographic.
- Include explanatory Earth system modeling activities informed by practices from Ambitious Science Teaching and Next Generation Science Storylines.
- Contain a scope and sequence of CLEAN resources that coherently build students’ understanding of anchoring phenomena.
- Provide support for connecting and integrating climate and global change content into other parts of your curriculum.
Example Units
Sea Level Rise: Investigating local and global processes
Image courtesy of NOAA
Summary:
Sea level rise is a measurable, observable change in the Earth System that affects coastal ecosystems and human populations. This unit explores the causes, consequences, and mitigation of sea level rise. Through activities, datasets, and Earth system modeling, learners construct explanations about how the water cycle, greenhouse effect, and human activities are connected to this phenomenon. Modify this unit to meet your classroom needs!
Context for Use
- Grade Level: High School (adaptable for Middle School)
- Class: Integrated Earth & Life Science
- Instructional Time: 4-5 weeks
Learning Objectives
Students will…
- Analyze data to understand how changes in the greenhouse effect and water cycle caused by human activities have resulted in global sea level rise (HS-ESS2-2)
- Construct explanations based on evidence that sea level rise due to anthropogenic climate change affects human populations around the world (HS-ESS3-1).
Download the Sea Level Rise Unit Planning Guide
Download the Sea Level Rise Unit Materials (zip file)
High School Teacher Developed Units
These units were developed by California high school teachers about locally relevant phenomena. Funding for development of these units was provided by the California Science Project in collaboration with the Bay Area Science Project.
Click here to view drafts of these units:
- Wildfires in California
- Breakability of Cell Phone Screens and Periodic Trends: What makes Gorilla Glass so strong?
- Where did all of the sea stars go? Changes in the Populations of Sunflower Sea Stars
- Human Population and Environmental Degradation
Example Lessons
Draft of Fingerprinting Carbon: How we know that CO2 from human activities is causing climate change
Find more teaching tips for using UGC on the Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness Network