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

Teaching Strategies

Hands-on Laboratory-based Learning

I will teach several of the concepts in this unit by utilizing laboratory-based activities. I have found in past years that my chemistry students have heightened interest, engagement, and understanding when they are able to complete hands-on laboratory activities. Additionally, laboratory activities allow students to experience scientific phenomena either before or after they learn about it in a more formal context. I plan to implement several laboratory activities involving pH, indicators, acids, and marine organism shells.

Jigsaw Reading

I plan to implement the jigsaw reading approach while teaching my unit. This strategy uses multiple groups of students and can work in any size classroom. Within the groups, each student is responsible for reading a different section of text and sharing their knowledge with the other students in the group. This approach allows students to practice their reading skills as well as their summarizing and presentation skills. I plan to implement this strategy when introducing some of the impacts of climate change across different regions of the United States.

Demonstration-based Learning

I plan to provide some chemistry demonstrations to encourage students to think critically about some of the chemistry in this unit as well as some of the scientific processes and pathways behind them. Demonstrations are a good method for encouraging students to come up with their own ideas about how or why something they observe has happened. I will implement this strategy when introducing the concept of combustion for CO₂ production.

Data-based Learning

I plan to teach the students to retrieve and analyze real life data because these two related processes will build skills that students will benefit from throughout the remainder of their academic pursuits. In addition to encouraging students to explore the world of free data, I would like to work with the students to enhance their understanding of computer tools such as Google Sheets and Microsoft Excel. This teaching strategy will increase the ability of students to formulate their own conclusions about graphs of data that they have put together.

Direct Instruction and Guided Practice

I plan to use some direct instruction and guided practice to help the students understand some of the more complex chemistry concepts. This strategy will be limited because I want the students to be working, thinking, collaborating, and problem solving as much as possible. However, for some aspects of the unit, particularly the section about pH, students in the past have benefitted from direct instruction and guided practice due to the complexity in mathematical understanding.