Solving Environmental Problems through Engineering

CONTENTS OF CURRICULUM UNIT 20.04.10

  1. Unit Guide
  1. Introduction and Rationale
  2. The History of Climate Change
  3. Climate Change Basics: The science behind rising temperatures.
  4. The Greenhouse Gases: More than just CO2
  5. Climate Change: What happens as global temperatures rise.
  6. Climate Change: What are we going to do?
  7. Philadelphia: One city’s likely scenario in the coming climate crisis.
  8. Unit Planning for Middle School Students Studying Climate Change
  9. Pedagogy and Teaching Strategies for this Unit.
  10. Lesson Activities
  11. Bibliography
  12. Endnotes
  13. Appendix on Implementing District Standards

Engineers Wanted: Climate Change Experience Necessary!

Rachel Odoroff

Published September 2020

Tools for this Unit:

Guide Entry to 20.04.10

With both weather and climate changing due to increased fossil fuel consumption, humans are facing choices at personal, local, national and international levels: reduce carbon emissions or adapt our farming, housing, transportation, our whole towns and cities to the coming reality. Using a project based approach, this unit will explore the unique challenges that Philadelphia, Pennsylvania will face in the coming years and calls upon middle school students to design a retrofitted model of their school to address those changes. Embedded in the unit is multidisciplinary learning which requires students to read graphs, analyze data, conduct scientific experiments, and to justify their design choices with written and oral responses while they imagine engineered solutions to locally based problems. This unit should be adaptable for students and teachers in other locales with minor adjustments.

(Developed for Science, grade 8; recommended for Science, grades 6-8, and Environmental Education, grades 6-12)

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