Let's create continuous conversations about climate change education: Spreading the Sediment of Science!

Climate and Health Youth Education Toolkit

Provided by: American Public Health Association

Lesson Plans Grades 9-12

Synopsis

This teacher guide and lesson plan are designed for health professionals to use for a guest lecture about the health impacts of climate change in a high school class.
Though the target audience is health professionals, health and science teachers will also find this lesson relevant and teacher-friendly.
Students will read a section of the Executive Summary for the 2016 Climate and Health Assessment and look at climate change and health impacts as a system.

Subjects: Biology, Health

Authors: American Public Health Association

Region: United States

Languages: English

Positives

The Evaluating an Adaptation Strategy activity includes a scoring guide that is helpful for both students and teachers.
The Tips From a High School Teacher section is extremely helpful for teachers to use throughout the year.

Prerequisites

The lesson will take about an hour and a half.
Students should understand climate change and its causes.
The links for the Executive Summary of the 2016 Climate and Health Assessment and the chapter summaries are broken but can be found as PDFs using the other readings link.
The PowerPoint uses the terms adaptation and adaption interchangeably. To limit confusion, teachers may want to explain this or change all terms to the more popular term, adaptation.
There are a few broken links in the Resources section.

Differentiation & Implementation

Teachers can allow students to choose the evaluation activity they want to do, assign them based on their students' strengths, or have students complete multiple activities.
Teachers can use information gained from the prior knowledge segment to create strategic groups for the reading and graphic organizer portion of the lesson.
As students learn about the impending health impacts of climate change, they may need help processing difficult emotions. The Climate Emotions Wheel can help with this.
To showcase the students' evaluation activity, teachers can host a Solutions Fair where students present their created and researched solutions to the rest of the school or the community.

Scientist Notes

Teaching Tips

Standards

Resource Type and Format