Learning Targets
Long Term Learning Target 1: I can explain the impact of human actions on the Earth’s climate.
Supporting Learning Target 2: I can describe how carbon is recycled in the environment and through living things.
Supporting Learning Target 3: I can explain how human activities have lead to the greenhouse effect, global warming and climate change.
Do now...
Accelerated Reading
Get your book out and read for 15 minutes in silence.
If you need to make notes on your book you may do so.
Do now...
Who is this?
Do now...
Greta Thunberg
If solutions within the system are so impossible to find, then... we should change the system itself.
You say you love your children above all else, and yet you are stealing their future in front of their very eyes
You lied to us. You gave us false hope. You told us that the future was something to look forward to.
This ongoing irresponsible behavior will no doubt be remembered in history as one of the greatest failures of humankind
DLT: I can describe ways in which we can have an impact on scientific issues.
DLT: I can ……….
15/04/19
Why should I be studying for a future that soon will be no more when no one is doing anything whatsoever to save that future?
Since August 2018, she has spent every Friday sitting outside the Swedish Parliament, on strike from school in protest about climate change.
“Listen to climate scientists”
She spent her school Easter holidays travelling across Europe to meet the Pope, politicians and protestors at the Extinction Rebellion climate change protest in London.
DLT: I can describe ways in which we can have an impact on scientific issues.
Do now: Which of the following contains carbon? Add to your table from yesterday.
Object | Does it contain carbon? | Explanation |
Seashell | | |
Wood | | |
Plastic | | |
Fabric | | |
Carbonated drink (e.g. Pepsi) | | |
DLT: I can describe how carbon is recycled through natural and human processes.
DLT: I can ……….
15/04/19
Model
Draw the story
The Atmosphere:
My life started out easy, in the air. I had the pleasure of being in a molecule with two extremely nice oxygen atoms. Perhaps I should introduce myself. I am a typical carbon atom. I now am in a carbon dioxide molecule and am just drifting.
The Plant:
It turned out I was being absorbed by the leaves of a potato plant. It wasn’t bad being in a potato leaf, but I prefer being in the air much better. I was combined with water and with a flash of light energy I was converted to sugar. I was squeezed down tubes in the stem called phloem and was stored in the potato root as starch for several weeks. One day the potato was picked and was cut up into little slices, myself being part of the smallest slice. I was cooked up into some lovely mash covered in butter. I felt the mash being moved around on the plate. A fork was lifted and the potato was eaten by a human being!
The Human Body:
Shining white sharp teeth chewed the potato and then gulp! A long dark passage led straight downward into a larger space called the stomach. I was bumped around and jumbled about. I was not in the digestive system for long. It was just a couple of hours. I was broken down into glucose and absorbed through the villi into the bloodstream. Just as the human was about to turn out the light for the night, eager to start work on her new movie, one of her cells reacted me in my glucose form with oxygen and I was finally combined back with my friends the oxygen atoms. I was now carbon dioxide again! I moved from the cell, into the blood and out of the lungs via the alveoli. Marilyn breathed me out as carbon dioxide.
The Atmosphere Again:
I was free! Happy, in the atmosphere again. I came to know my two oxygen atoms and was very happy in my new molecule. I stayed in this molecule for a few years, floating around and having the time of my life. My molecule rested near the ground, maybe too close because sooner than I knew it I was being absorbed by a raspberry bush leaf and turned back into glucose again. These berries nested in the middle of a vast forest. I heard some birds tweeting around me. Eventually the raspberry plant died and was squashed and squeezed under layers and layers of plant matter above it. I stayed in this plant for a million years or so (I really just lost count) until eventually it was pressed and compacted so much that I turned into a different substance altogether: coal. I still lay in the forest until I heard the noise of shovels digging up the ground above me. Finally after such a long time light shone around. For the first time I saw what I was.
Coal:
I felt bits of coal around me being lifted up and put into a weird carrier type thing. Scientists were staring at me through advanced equipment.
“Lets try burning the coal. In the 20th and 21st century people often used this process to heat things, but it was most commonly used for cooking things. We are going to take this recreation of what they called bacon and try to cook it in coal and in order to do that we must burn the coal.”
And so I was burned and set free by it. I mixed with oxygen and became carbon dioxide. I was free for the present, but soon I would be in a human or plant. I would never be free from the carbon cycle.
Where does carbon go?
How is it transferred?
Where is it stored?
Exploring the Carbon Cycle
AIR
Exploring the Carbon Cycle
Task 1: Go to each station and read the information available. Draw arrows on this diagram to show where carbon is being transferred within the carbon cycle. Draw in pencil.
Task 2: Answer at least 3 questions in full sentences in your book:
The Carbon Cycle
Carbon exists in all of these things at the same time and only a portion of the carbon in each thing moves.
So what impact are humans having on this cycle?
Task 3: In a different coloured pen, draw arrows to show where:
Do now: Which of the following contains carbon? Add to your table from yesterday.
Object | Does it contain carbon? | Explanation |
Seashell | | |
Wood | | |
Plastic | | |
Fabric | | |
Carbonated drink (e.g. Pepsi) | | |
Do now: What contains carbon? Answers.
Object | Does it contain carbon? | Explanation |
Seashell | Yes | They are made from calcium carbonate. |
Wood | Yes | Wood is composed of approximately 50% carbon, which comes from the carbon dioxide in the air assimilated in photosynthesis.. |
Plastic | Yes | Plastics are made from crude oil (a hydrocarbon), which is a fossil fuel formed from the remains of plants and animals which died millions of years ago. |
Fabric | Yes | Natural fabrics come from plants, which contain carbon; synthetic materials are often derived from crude oil. |
Carbonated drink (e.g. Pepsi) | Yes | The bubbles contain carbon dioxide. |
Do now: Which of the four comments do you agree with?
What happens to the carbon in the faeces?
Decomposers will release it into the air as carbon dioxide.
It will be absorbed by plants and turned into sugar.
It will diffuse into the air as oxygen.
It will evaporate into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide.
Do now: Which of the four comments do you agree with?
What happens to the carbon in the faeces?
Decomposers will release it into the air as carbon dioxide.
It will be absorbed by plants and turned into sugar.
It will diffuse into the air as oxygen.
It will evaporate into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide.
If you chose this box, write correct versions of the other three sentences. What do you need to change/add/take away to correct them?
If you chose these boxes, you need to spend more time revising the carbon cycle and what is happening at each stage.
First of all, THINK, PAIR, SHARE why the answer you chose was incorrect. How could you correct it?
If you chose this box, you need to spend a little more time revising the carbon cycle.
The statement is not altogether incorrect, but is not the correct answer to this particular question. Why?
DLT: I can explain the greenhouse effect and describe how it is contributing to global warming and climate change.
Greenhouse effect Global warming Climate change
DLT: I can explain the greenhouse effect and describe how it is contributing to global warming and climate change.
Greenhouse effect Global warming Climate change
Infrared radiation | Average | Storms |
Absorb | 1-2 degrees Celsius | Floods |
Reflect | Across the planet | Habitats affected |
Carbon dioxide | | Drought |
| | Extreme temperatures |
DLT: I can explain the greenhouse effect and describe how it is contributing to global warming and climate change.
Greenhouse effect Global warming Climate change
What is the greenhouse effect?
DLT: I can explain the greenhouse effect and describe how it is contributing to global warming and climate change.
Greenhouse effect Global warming Climate change
DLT: I can explain the greenhouse effect and describe how it is contributing to global warming and climate change.
Greenhouse effect Global warming Climate change
Infrared radiation | Average | Storms |
Absorb | 1-2 degrees Celsius | Floods |
Reflect | Across the planet | Habitats affected |
Carbon dioxide | | Drought |
| | Extreme temperatures |
Do now: On a whiteboard, write down 3 words you know and 3 words you don’t know
DLT: I can evaluate the implications of continued carbon emissions on the Earth’s climate.
DLT: I can evaluate the implications of continued carbon emissions on the Earth’s climate.
Choose one of the three columns below and try to put the key words into a sentence on a whiteboard.
Greenhouse effect Global warming Climate change
Infrared radiation | Average | Regular storms |
Absorb | 1-2 degrees Celsius | Regular floods |
Reflect | Across the planet | Habitats affected |
Carbon dioxide | | Over decades |
| | Extreme temperatures |
DLT: I can evaluate the implications of continued carbon emissions on the Earth’s climate.
Choose at least one task from each level of the pyramid.
| Evaluate to what extent human activity is contributing to climate change. | | |||
| Explain how the greenhouse effect contributes to climate change. | Explain why humans are accelerating the rate of global warming. | | ||
Explain how the greenhouse effect works. You may need to use a diagram to help you. | Explain two ways in which humans contribute to the greenhouse effect. | Explain the impact of human activity on the carbon cycle. | |||
Describe the greenhouse effect. | Describe two ways humans contribute to the greenhouse effect. | Define the key words deforestation and combustion. | |||
Pressing save: Draw around your hand and write five things you have learnt today, one fact on each finger.
Guiding Question: Should humans leave Earth?
Do now: Write your initial thoughts to the guiding question, based on this Case Study, on a whiteboard.
What can be done to combat climate change?
Suggestions for research:
What can be done to combat climate change?
Suggestions:
Case Study 3: Leaving Earth
What do we need to leave Earth?
Maths assessment