Climate Justice and Equity Learning Lab Lessons
Lesson Plans
Grades9, 10, 11, 12Civics, Geography
This resource has been reviewed by SubjectToClimate's climate scientists and verified for scientific accuracy and up-to-date information. Learn about our review process →
Provided by The Climate Initiative
What it is
- This unit about climate justice includes six lessons and two additional activities to gain familiarity with the topic.
- Students will create land acknowledgments, become familiar with terms related to climate justice, look at climate justice through sociocultural, economic, and ecological lenses, explore case studies concerning different examples of climate injustice, write their own case study, analyze data about the impacts of industrial farming on marginalized communities, develop a youth engagement strategy, engage in community interviews, and develop a community action project.
- This is a companion resource for the student lab.
Teaching tips
Positives
- The directions for the Bitmoji classroom are extremely detailed, allowing for seamless student exploration.
- This unit's focus on young activists will empower students and help them see their ability to affect change.
Prerequisites
- Depending on the length of class time, the activities may each take multiple days.
- The link for the case study Youth Voices for Climate Change works in the teacher slides but not in the student lab document.
- Students should know how to cite evidence from a text.
- The links for some case study examples, the geography of climate justice, and Polluting Sites in Northern Manhattan in the Bitmoji links reference are broken.
- Some of the extra articles and resources require subscriptions.
Differentiation & Implementation
- Some videos, like the one featured in the first case study, rely on subtitles to convey the message. Some students may benefit from slowing the video playback speed or having the subtitles read aloud to them.
- After analyzing the data on industrial agriculture, students can discuss individual actions, such as eating less meat or supporting regenerative agriculture.
- Students may benefit from using the Climate Emotions Wheel to help them process difficult emotions or understand what they have read after learning about climate anxiety.
From the scientist review
This lesson plan provides many resources for teachers to teach about climate justice and equity. Within the lesson, students will also learn about climate change and its impacts. Framing the lesson around climate justice helps students connect to and better understand the science. The variety of activities in the lesson also give students an idea of how scientific research is performed. The resources provided are accurate and is recommended for teaching.
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