Emissions of Heat-trapping Gasses. Your Climate, Your Future by World Wildlife Federation. Grades 9-12.
http://www.worldwildlife.org/climate/curriculum/WWFBinaryitem5962.pdf. Record how much energy they use at home to calculate their own carbon footprint. Students learn about atmospheric concentrations of heat-trapping gases and make predictions while identifying the sources of emissions.
Lesson 1: The Carbon Link. Climate Change: Connections and Solutions, Facing the Future. Grades 6-8.
http://www.facingthefuture.org/Curriculum/ClimateChangeGrades68/tabid/453/Default.aspx. Students take on roles as part of an interactive carbon cycle model, then witness a demonstration of the greenhouse effect and explore its role in global climate change.
Lesson 2: Carbon Dioxide Trends. Climate Change: Connections and Solutions, Facing the Future. Grades 6-8.
http://www.facingthefuture.org/Curriculum/ClimateChangeGrades68/tabid/453/Default.aspx. Students graph data to examine atmospheric carbon dioxide trends during the past 45 years and predict future carbon dioxide emissions. The activity closes with a discussion of ways to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
Carbon Dioxide Exercise. Science Education Resource Center. Grades 6-12.
http://serc.carleton.edu/introgeo/interactive/examples/co2.html. Students work in groups, plotting carbon dioxide concentrations over time on overheads and estimating the rate of change over five years. Stacked together, the overheads for the whole class show an increase on carbon dioxide over five years and annual variation driven by photosynthesis. This exercise enables students to practice basic quantitative skills and understand how important sampling intervals can be when studying changes over time. A goal is to see how small sample size may give incomplete picture of data.
Why is Carbon Important? NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Grades 9-12.
http://icp.giss.nasa.gov/education/modules/carbon/topic2/. Students explore the carbon cycle and the relationship between atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations and temperature. Students create and compare graphs of carbon dioxide and temperature data from one local (Mauna Loa, Hawaii) meteorological station and one NASA global data set. These graphs, as well as a global vegetation map and an atmospheric wind circulation patterns diagram, are used as evidence to support the scientific claims they develop through their analysis and interpretation.
Carbon Dioxide Removal. American Museum of Natural History. Grades 6-8.
http://www.amnh.org/education/resources/card_frame.php?rid=1475&rurlid=1445. In this experiment, students will observe a natural process that removes carbon dioxide (CO2) from Earth's atmosphere. This process is a part of the carbon cycle and results in temperature suitable for life. Students will learn that the carbon cycle is a fundamental Earth process. Throughout Earth's history, the balance of carbon has kept the atmosphere's carbon dioxide (CO2) and Earth's temperature within relatively narrow ranges. Using a mass balance model to understand carbon dioxide and its connection to global warming.
SERC-Teaching Quantitative Skills in Geoscience Collection. Grades 9-12.
http://serc.carleton.edu/quantskills/activities/co2_global.html. Students explore the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide over the past 40 years with an interactive online model. They use the model and observations to estimate present emission rates and emission growth rates. The model is then used to estimate future levels of carbon dioxide using different future emission scenarios. These different scenarios are then linked by students to climate model predictions also used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Using a Very, Very Simple Climate Model in the Classroom. Windows to the Universe. Grades 6-12.
http://www.windows2universe.org/teacher_resources/teach_climatemodel.html. This is a teaching activity in which students learn about the connection between CO2 emission, CO2 concentration, and average global temperatures. Through a simple online model, students learn about the relationship between these and learn about climate modeling while predicting temperature change over the 21st century.
Global Climate Change: The Effects of Global Warming. Teachers’ Domain. Grades 9-12.
http://www.teachersdomain.org/resource/ess05.sci.ess.watcyc.lp_global2/. The activity follows a progression that examines the CO2 content of various gases, explores the changes in the atmospheric levels of CO2 from 1958 to 2000 from the Mauna Loa Keeling curve, and the relationship between CO2 and temperature over the past 160,000 years. This provides a foundation for examining individuals' input of CO2 to the atmosphere and how to reduce it.
Understanding the Carbon Cycle: A Jigsaw Approach. SERC-On the Cutting Edge Collection. Grades 9-12.
http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/climatechange/activities/15162.html. This is a jigsaw activity in which students are assigned one step out of five in the geochemical process stages to research on the organic carbon cycle. Students then teach their step in cross-step groups until everyone understands all five process stages.
Dinosaur Breath-Learning About the Carbon Cycle. TeachEngineering - Integrated Teaching and Learning Program. Grades 6-8.
http://www.teachengineering.org/view_activity.php?url=http://www.teachengineering.com/collection/cub_/activities/cub_carbon/cub_carbon_lesson01_activity1.xml. This activity illustrates the carbon cycle using an age-appropriate hook, and it includes thorough discussion and hands-on experimentation. Students learn about the geological (ancient) carbon cycle; they investigate the role of dinosaurs in the carbon cycle, and the eventual storage of carbon in the form of chalk. Students discover how the carbon cycle has been occurring for millions of years and is necessary for life on Earth. Finally, they may extend their knowledge to the concept of global warming and how engineers are working to understand the carbon cycle and reduce harmful carbon dioxide emissions.
Our Unique Atmosphere. Your Climate, Your Future by World Wildlife Federation. Grades 9-12.
http://www.worldwildlife.org/climate/curriculum/WWFBinaryitem5961.pdf. Read and discuss articles on the atmosphere to understand how heat-trapping gases work in the atmosphere and why they and carbon dioxide are necessary for life on Earth.