Grateful acknowledgements to the sponsors of this site: the We Are The Weather Makers
TEACHERS' NOTES
We Are the Weather Makers presents a perfect opportunity for cross-curricular work at Year 8 -10. The material will engage your students and the activities will enliven classrooms.
Students can work with the text intensively for a 3-5 week unit or across a longer period in smaller bursts.
There is scope for performance, science, writing, group and individual work.
Learning resources provided on this site
The activities on this site follow the five parts of the book We Are the Weather Makers. It is intended that students complete the relevant activities after having read each section of the book.
The activities have been designed so that the book can be studied within an individual subject (such as Science, English or Geography), or it can also be studied across curriculum areas. That is, subject teachers can collaborate to involve students in a multi-disciplinary or cross-curricular unit.
The activities are broadly stated, allow for the demonstration of a broad range of skills and many are open ended. These features allow teachers to shape them to suit their own particular group of students.
Summary of learning activities
Part One: The Atmosphere
and
Part Two: One in Ten Thousand
Activities for these two sections of the book have been divided into discrete subject areas. The idea is that students will have read the relevant section of the text and will then select one or more activities to complete in the relevant subject area. Alternatively, the teacher may direct students towards particular activities.
Activities are graded across six levels
based on Bloom's Taxonomy, see
www.coun.uvic.ca/learn/program/hndouts/bloom.html
At the bottom of the page is a link to PDFs of learning level tables, as per Bloom's Taxonomy.
Part Three: The Science of Prediction
For this section of the book, students can complete one of six possible projects. The projects are graded across six levels of difficulty.
The skills required for each project range across a number of subjects, but the exact subjects varies for each project.
Students could work on projects in class time across the relevant subjects. The projects require one-two weeks work either in class or at home.
Part Four: People in Greenhouses
The activities in this section require a little more commitment and time from both teachers and students. Students work through the steps sequentially towards a re-enactment and re-creation of the Kyoto Convention.
As the book is written by an Australian, there is a focus in this section of the text on the Australian experience of the Kyoto Protocol. The activity, in drawing on the material in the book, is possibly more useful for Australian school students. However, the activities could be tailored to suit any group of students whose governmental representatives have engaged in discussions about climate change and government action.
Part Five: The Solution
This section contains a variety of activities from which students or teachers could select according to their interests. There could perhaps be an emphasis on empowerment, choice and community engagement. Help your students to feel as though they Are the Weather Makers.
You may find further ideas and suggestions on this site as teachers and students write to us telling us what they have learnt and achieved.
Good luck!
We are The Weather Makers
LEARNING LEVELS
NOTE:This is a PDF document (Acrobat version 4) of Learning Levels in the program. It is a 4 page A4 document and is 115 KB. It has been designed for printing out in colour. Click on the image below to show pdf and/or to download.
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