Published: July 6,2016
By Kristin M. Schild
Had you told me five years ago that as a Ph.D. student in climate sciences I would be teaching once a week at a middle school, I likely would have responded with a quizzical, “I’m not really sure you want me in a middle school.” But as the climate is changing, there is an increased need for science literacy and climate awareness in our younger generations.
New models for middle school science, including the formation and implementation of the Next Generation Science Standards, are being spurred by these changes in climate. So when I was presented with the opportunity to pair up with a middle school teacher and develop the climate curriculum through the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Fellows in K-12 Education (GK-12 for short), I could not sign up fast enough.
Our goals for the classroom were simple: motivate and engage students, involve students in the scientific process and make science tangible and fun!
We first began by installing an automatic weather station at our school, Indian River School in Canaan, NH, just outside our classroom window. The weather station had a digital console on the front table and data was being uploaded to Weather Underground every 15 minutes. Immediately students began asking questions: “What does this number mean?” “What is that white pancake part?” These questions were gold—the students were engaged. The next hurdle was to use the weather station to introduce material and define the difference between weather and climate.
Our first lab, on solar radiation and absorption, expanded their thinking beyond the classroom. We wanted the students to get an idea of how much energy was coming from the sun, how much was absorbed or reflected by different surfaces and how that related to surface temperature. Armed with infrared temperature guns and pyranometers (solar radiation gauges), the students were free to roam the campus collecting measurements of incoming and outgoing solar radiation over different surfaces and each material’s respective temperature.
Upon returning to the classroom, we compared the student’s incoming radiation measurement with that from our weather station as charted through the Weather Underground website. We then began plotting which surfaces retained more heat than others. Through this inquiry-based lesson, we were able to introduce the idea of cities versus parks, what makes up greenhouse gases and how small changes can have a large impact.
Our students truly learned the difference between weather and climate in our first large-scale project inspired by the 90’s television show, “Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?” The students used online sources to research climates in four different locations, then recorded the 30-year monthly average temperature and precipitation record. We then had the students work in groups to figure out to which of their locations Carmen may have fled to given the clues they were provided.
Through these different projects we were able to introduce a majority of our material in the weather and climate unit. With the weather station just outside the window and our ability to check on the station through wunderground.com made the unit that much more tangible for our lesson plans. The students became invested in the process of science; they had a fuller understanding of weather and climate systems beyond knowledge of just the components. The use of inquiry-based labs really helped challenge prior weather and climate misconceptions or misunderstandings and provided the kids with a strong foundation of science today as well as the skills to address challenges they will face as climate patterns continue to evolve.
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