Climate Change Lesson Plan: Earth and Human Activity

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This lesson accompanies the BrainPOP topic Climate Change, and supports the standard of constructing an argument for how human activity impacts Earth’s systems. Students demonstrate understanding through a variety of  projects.

Step 1: ACTIVATE PRIOR KNOWLEDGE

Ask students: 

• What do you know or have heard about climate change? 
• How do you think it impacts your life? 

Step 2: BUILD KNOWLEDGE

• Read aloud the description on the Climate Change topic page.
• Play the Movie, pausing to check for understanding. 
• Assign Related Reading. Have students read one of the following articles: “Eating and Drinking” or “The Modern World.” Partner them with someone who read a different article to share what they learned with each other.
  

Step 3: APPLY and ASSESS 

Assign the Climate Change Quiz, prompting students to apply essential literacy skills while demonstrating what they learned about this topic.

Step 4: EXTEND and DEEPEN

Students express what they learned about climate change while practicing essential literacy skills with one or more of the following activities. Differentiate by assigning ones that meet individual student needs.  

• Make-a-Movie: Create a PSA describing the causes and impacts of climate change. In your PSA, answer this question: How can people help to lessen the impact of climate change?
• Make-a-Map: Make a concept map identifying different causes of climate change, and their effects.
• Creative Coding: Code a museum with artifacts representing different causes of climate change. 

More to Explore

Climate Change Unit: Continue to build understanding around climate change with more BrainPOP topics 

Teacher Support Resources:

• Pause Point Overview: Video tutorial showing how Pause Points actively engage students  to stop, think, and express ideas. 
• Learning Activities Modifications: Strategies to meet ELL and other instructional and student needs.
• Learning Activities Support: Resources for best practices using BrainPOP.