Teaching Activities
Activating Prior Knowledge and Building Background
Activating prior knowledge and building background knowledge is an essential element of introducing students to complex academic texts and content. This activity is expected to span three to four 90-minute class periods.
I expect that students will have some knowledge about climate change and the related effects of climate change prior to beginning our learning unit. To assess this prior knowledge, I will lead an informal class discussion while projecting a concept map with “climate change” as the map’s central topic. As students respond, I will fill out the concept map. I will pose the following questions, and may ask additional questions, depending on student responses:
- What is climate change?
- What causes climate change?
- What are the effects of climate change?
Students will then complete an anticipation guide with statements about climate change. Students must agree or disagree with a statement and give an explanation about why they agree or disagree with a given statement. Students will share their responses and respond to classmates in a modified Socratic Seminar-style discussion. The anticipation guide will include 8-10 statements, such as the following:
- Climate change will impact everyone equally.
- Climate change would happen with or without human activities.
- Every place will see similar effects from climate change.
- People can move away to escape the negative effects of climate change.
After the discussion has concluded, students will complete a quick-write activity in which they form an initial claim to the question: Will climate change impact all people in the same way? Students will support their claims with material from the class discussion, prior knowledge and personal experiences. The goal of this quick-write activity is to illustrate the importance of revising and forming claims based on evidence. This will become clear for students upon the conclusion of the unit when they form evidence-based claims in a formal written argument.
In the next part of this activity, students will engage with a text set that illustrates the science of climate change, the global impacts of climate change, and the local effects of climate change in Delaware. Students will view infographics, science articles, and graphs in the text set to support student understanding of climate change and how it will impact geographic areas in different ways. Specifically, students will use interactive maps and graphs to determine that increased rainfall and sea level rise will cause damaging floods in Delaware. I will model and provide students with guided practice opportunities and sentence frames to form evidence-based claims about how climate change-fueled flooding will impact Delaware communities.
Gathering Data: Comparing Flood-prone Communities in Delaware
In this part of the unit, students will learn how communities experience climate change differently, especially along racial and socioeconomic lines. I expect this activity to occur over two to three 90-minute class periods.
Racial housing discrimination practices like redlining have segregated many communities that, to this day, experience higher burdens of environmental hazards, including those created by climate change. Delaware is no exception to this trend, which is evident when viewing census tract data as it relates to climate change vulnerability.
I expect that many students will understand the concept of segregation, but have little to no knowledge of redlining. Therefore, students will complete a KWL chart before, during, and after viewing a short video that explains the policy of redlining and its lasting effects on communities of color.
Students will then begin exploring an online climate and economic justice screening tool. We will discuss the meaning of a “census tract,” and explore different census tracts around Delaware. Students will learn how communities are identified as “disadvantaged” and make observations about census tracts in their own city, included those identified as disadvantaged, and those that are not.
Students will then use the online screener tool to gather census tract data for two flood-prone communities in Delaware. One community is the predominately Black community of Southbridge in Wilmington, Delaware, located along the Christina River. Another community is a predominately White community located in coastal Bethany Beach, Delaware. Both communities are located in areas that are in the 98th percentile for risk from climate change-fueled flooding events; however, Southbridge is identified as disadvantaged due to the community’s high percentage of families with low-income economic status. As a result, residents of Southbridge are less likely to be protected by flood insurance, less able to make necessary repairs after flood events, and less able to sell their flood-damaged residences and move elsewhere. In addition, economic investment has declined in the community due to increased flooding, further hampering residents’ efforts to relocate.
Students will gather data and then use sentence frames to interpret and compare data from both communities. This data comparison will be supported by news stories and resident interviews from both communities. Students will note the structural and mental health effects of flooding in Southbridge, compared to that in Delaware’s beach communities, which have historically been repaired and protected by beach nourishment activities funded by the state and federal government. As students interpret the data, they will revisit, and potentially revise, their claims from their quick-write activity at the beginning of the unit. Students will conclude, based on the evidence they gathered, that climate change is not impacting all people equally. They will use evidence gathered from the video on redlining, local news stories, and the census tract comparison to support their claim and develop reasoning to explain how racial make-up and economic status of a community can contribute to the community’s vulnerability to the effects of climate change.
#3 Forming and Supporting an Evidence-Based Argument
The final, summative assessment in the curriculum unit is an argument essay in which students will demonstrate what they have learned in the unit. The essay will include an introduction, body paragraphs, a counterclaim and rebuttal, and a conclusion. The pre-writing, drafting, and revising of this essay will occur over three to four 90-minute class periods.
In the introduction, students will summarize and provide background about the effects of climate change on Delaware communities and state a main claim about the disproportionate burden of flooding on the community of Southbridge. Students will then develop body paragraphs that state related claims supported by evidence and reasoning. Students will use evidence gathered during the census tract data comparison to demonstrate the disproportionate physical, economic, and mental health impacts of flooding on the predominately Black and low-income community of Southbridge compared to a similarly flood-prone beach community in Bethany Beach. In this part of the unit, students will authentically apply language skills to analyze and explain how data supports their claims.
Students will demonstrate their understanding of redlining and racial housing discrimination to respond to the counterclaim that residents in flood-prone communities could simply move to another location. This section of the argument essay provides students with the opportunity to demonstrate their understanding of policies like redlining, but also requires students to think deeply about how discriminatory systems impact the health and safety of whole communities and often limit individual choice in escaping or avoiding environmental hazards.
Before students begin the conclusion of their argument essays, they will learn about the advocacy of Southbridge residents, and the ways in which the community fought for protection from the increased frequency of flooding. If possible, students will have the opportunity to interview a resident and activist from the community about their efforts to secure the recent 26-million-dollar, flood-mitigating wetlands project. Alternatively, students will watch interviews with community activists and view images and videos of the project. In addition, students will consider the longevity of the wetlands project as a way to prevent flooding, considering the continued projection of sea level rise along the Delaware coast. They will investigate and discuss additional, longer-term solutions to flooding in communities like Southbridge. Then, students will summarize their claims and describe their long-term solutions to flooding in communities like Southbridge in the conclusion of their argument essays.
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