K-5 Understanding Change
K-5 Understanding CHANGE: An Introduction to Climate Curriculum
https://tenstrands.org/eeicurriculum/curriculum
All 10 Strands Lessons include CA Standards & Environmental Principles, Learning Objectives, and Differential Instruction to reach our increasingly diverse population. There are ideas for discussion,, and questions to ask with answers, glossaries, and planned EEI units that provide various learning structures, books for teachers to use, others to duplicate, maps, charts, pictures and photographs, and role-plays, lead toward students working in pairs or small groups to discuss concepts and ideas to share with the whole class, materials for projects, and activities as well as Traditional and Alternative assessments. More and more lessons are in Spanish, which are invaluable to parents, who often speak English, but never studied it .
Teaching about change helps young children to envision future changes, and the Kindergarten curriculum “Some Things Change and Some Things Remain the Same,” is easily adaptable to K-5 grade levels. It compares an elementary school from 100 years ago with school today; then examines changes as the community grows: transportation, the effects of consumption, the need for more resources, and its effect on the ecosystems we depend on.The First Grade Curriculum studies transportation, and the special, economic, environmental, and lifestyle changes “The Move Through Time,” (title of a student booklet) has caused. The inclusion of activities such as students taking pictures of places, buildings, and vehicles to compare with older photographs; and engaging family members in describing the past, can inspire teachers to adapt them to their grade levels and locations, use the ideas they find relevant, and move farther than the “10 Strands” lessons go, making “Imagining and Designing a sustainable future” the most important part of the lesson.
I have noticed, in speaking about Climate Literacy to people of all ages, a fear of change that feeds a fatalistic attitude. I have heard, over and over, “I just don’t think about it; there’s nothing we can do.” Yet we all know change is inevitable. This is why considering what changes, and what remains the same is a good way to introduce Climate Change education, with the addition of positive plans and projections for the future.There are amazing new discoveries and inventions easy to access on-line as well as throughout print, broadcast, and televised media, and the number is growing exponentially
Sample Projects for classes”
(K-5)A positive change:Teach students to separate compostable lunch waste into buckets,which is used by the school farm, where students grow vegetables for the school, the community, or to bring home, Every class has a section and a time to work it..School gardens are often the best places to engage family member, healthy and fun..
(4-5) First read a newspaper article or show a film clip of the Mega Hurricane that recently hit Miami.Then read the very short “Goodby, Miami,” a “futuristic” story of destruction by rising water.(Goodell, Jeff, from A Peoples’Curriculum For the Earth by Bill Bigeloy & Tim Swinehart, Rethinking Schools. 2014, p.77) Have students discuss possible solutions.Then
Read or show: ( This is from K-12 Climate Action,org School Curriculum.(Will add complete citation.) Also easy to find on-line.
¼ of the Netherlands is below sea level, which is rising.They use floating houses that can be connected to land by removable stilts; there are removable storm surge barriers. Homes run on solar & wave energy; Vegetables are planted on tops of dykes, homes, apartment buildings and businesses. Water architecture is based on copying the structure of sea life. This is the
“Blue City” that solves the problem of the rising sea.
Here, wildfires are a great risk. When large sections of houses burn what kind of new, more safely designed housing, businesses, and public buildings could replace them ? Divide students into design teams for various aspects. (There are many more projects.)