In this media literacy activity, students will read two articles about the scientific consensus that humans are causing global warming.
Students will answer a variety of decoding questions that will help them examine the methods the authors used in the articles to validate or prove their points.
Teaching Tips
Positives
This lesson encourages students to consider how their own biases influence their judgment.
Students will see how citing a variety of credible sources can help to bolster a claim.
Additional Prerequisites
Teachers must create a free account to access the resources.
Teachers have to download the files to use this resource.
Differentiation
Students could respond to questions individually or in small groups before discussing their answers as a class.
The activity plan provides questions for social studies, science, English language arts, and media literacy classes.
Students could discuss what makes a source credible. Students could consider the following questions:
How do people verify information?
What makes people trust an information provider?
What might make someone change their mind about something they believe is true?
Other resources on this topic include this lesson on how we know climate change is real and this lesson from the National Center for Science Education on the scientific consensus about climate change.
Scientist Notes
There are no contradictions in the datasets and scientific evidence as presented in the resource. This is recommended for students to investigate and gain deep knowledge of climate evidence.
Standards
English Language Arts
Reading: Science & Technical Subjects (6-12)
9-10.RST.4 Determine the meaning of symbols, key terms, and other domain-specific words and phrases as they are used in a specific scientific or technical context relevant to grades 9-10 texts and topics.
9-10.RST.6 Analyze the author's purpose in providing an explanation, describing a procedure, or discussing an experiment in a text, defining the question the author seeks to address.
Science
ESS2: Earth's Systems
HS.ESS2.2 Analyze geoscience data to make the claim that one change to Earth’s surface can create feedbacks that cause changes to other Earth systems.
ESS3: Earth and Human Activity
HS.ESS3.5 Analyze geoscience data and the results from global climate models to make an evidence-based forecast of the current rate of global or regional climate change and associated future impacts to Earth’s systems.
Social Sciences
Geography (K-12)
HS.40 Use geographic data to analyze the interconnectedness of physical and human regional systems (such as a river valley and culture, water rights/use in regions, choice/impact of settlement locations) and their interconnectedness to global communities.
