Fires, Floods, and Droughts: Impacts of Climate Change in the U.S.

School Description and Rationale 

I will be teaching this unit for my 10th grade Chemistry students at Franklin Military Academy. As a specialty school within Richmond Public Schools, we are a relatively small school that has students from many different areas of the City of Richmond. I am the only Chemistry teacher at Franklin, and I expect to teach about 45-50 Chemistry students next school year. From my experience teaching at the school so far, many of the students face challenges with their mathematics skills, which creates opportunities for me to assist the students in making improvements in those areas. In past years, I have noticed that by offering several methods of mathematics skills practice presented through a Chemistry context, the students can achieve significant growth. Additionally, I have found in previous years that students thrive in an environment where they can complete hands-on and laboratory-based activities that encourage critical thinking. I’ve intentionally planned my unit to contain these types of activities. 

The topic of pH, acids, and bases in chemistry can be challenging for students to master. In addition, I have not always found that these topics are the most interesting for my students. Ocean acidification is an interesting way to teach this topic to students. I am hoping that by establishing local, real-world connections to these concepts, the students will become more interested and engage more closely with them. I am also creating this unit with the purpose of bringing together concepts from biology and environmental science and connecting them with these chemistry concepts. This cross-curricular learning process will ideally engage students who are less interested in the chemistry components and more interested in biology or environmental science. It will also show how several different science topics can be connected.

Richmond, Virginia is geographically quite close to the Norfolk and Virginia Beach, Virginia areas. Many of the students have been to these coastal areas to visit family and friends or participate in extracurricular activities. This will make it easier for students to make connections when we are talking about the oceans because many of them will have experienced it before. In addition to this, the James River also passes through Richmond. Since it is part of the Chesapeake Bay Watershed, it is in turn connected to the Atlantic Ocean.

This is an important topic for students to learn about because it shows that the human production of CO₂ can have negative impacts on local marine ecosystems. In addition to biodiversity loss, the reduced health of marine ecosystems will also have negative effects on local fishing economies and aquaculture.¹ It should be noted that the best possibilities for reducing these risks rely heavily on the reduction of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions.