Teaching Global Climate Change as a Cross-Cutting Concept (Middle School)
Presented by Dr. Rose Clark & Dr. Edward Zovinka
Wednesday, June 8, 2022 ◉ 1:30 pm to 4:30 pm
Teaching Global Climate Change for Middle School students seems like a daunting task. We are here to help teachers gain knowledge in environmental science to use in their classrooms to teach climate change. Global climate change is a cross-cutting concept involving biology, chemistry, earth science, history, economics, etc. Using a cross-cutting concept model we will be evaluating patterns, cause and effect, structure and function, proportion and quantity, and stability and change. Climate change fits nicely into the Ga state standards for teaching science, which emphasize obtaining data, evaluating data, and communicating information about cause and effect relationships.
In this workshop you will complete activities and experiments to learn about global climate change. You will utilize good resource sites to gather global climate information, actively plot data using spreadsheets, and collect your own data through hands-on experiments to model atmospheric activities. By using a spreadsheet to plot climate data, analyze and discuss the data, you will build your knowledge like a climate scientist and be able to articulate your knowledge about changes in the climate. We will learn climate change science in a welcoming discussion-friendly environment while studying a route to implementing the Standards of Excellence. Activities will be aligned with NGSS standards and will help you to meet the new Georgia Science Standards of Excellence. MS-ESS3.C2: Typically as human populations and per-capita consumption of natural resources increase, so do the negative impacts on Earth unless the activities and technologies involved are engineered otherwise. MS-ESS3.D1: Human activities, such as the release of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels, are major factors in the current rise in Earth’s mean surface temperature (global warming). A Thames and Kosmos Climate and Weather Experiment kit and digital thermometers will be provided for each teacher.
Special Guest: James Hobbs from Interface Products will be joining us to discuss one current method to remove carbon from the atmosphere. Interface’s company goal is to set their company on a path to reduce their negative impact on the environment and they have set a Mission Zero® (no carbon added to atmosphere). Other methods for trapping carbon will be discussed.
Target Audience: Middle School
Presenters
Dr. Rose A. Clark and Dr. Edward Zovinka are professors of chemistry at Saint Francis University (SFU) and have been teaching chemistry and environmental science for many years. Our background consists of 25+ years of teaching at the college level as well as doing outreach and teaching in the K-12 classrooms through our outreach programs.
Both have received awards for teaching and research from our university, the State of Pennsylvania, and National organizations.
Dr. Rose Clark earned a Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry from North Carolina State University and completed an NSF postdoctoral fellowship at the Pennsylvania State University before starting her position at SFU.
Dr. Edward P. Zovinka earned a Ph.D. in Inorganic Chemistry from U.C. Davis and his postdoc at North Carolina State University before starting his teaching/research career at SFU.
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