These materials were created by 2023-2024 Climate Change in Latin America Teacher Fellows. Each of the materials were created by participants for classroom use.The materials are separated by subject area, but some lessons are cross-curricular in nature. Lessons should be read and adapted by the classroom teacher to fit their specific needs.
Cross Curricular: Language Arts, Science, Social Studies
Environmental Justice in Indigenous Communities
Created by: Tamara Friend
Grade level: 6-8
Essential Questions:
1. How does climate policy impact different Indigenous communities around the world?
2. What role can we play to minimize the negative effects of global warming?
3. What are some of the direct impacts of global warming on local vegetation and culture?
4. What are the primary drivers of the global environmental crisis?
5. How can Traditional Ecological Knowledge help scientists study climate change?
6. What can we learn from indigenous peoples to help us live sustainably in the face of climate change?
English Language Arts
Rhetorical Analysis and Climate Justice
Created by Katie Titler
Grade level: 9-10
Common Core Standards:
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.9-10.6 – Determine an author’s point of view or purpose in a text and analyze how an author uses rhetoric to advance that point of view or purpose.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.9-10.1 – Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.9-10.2– Determine a central idea of a text and analyze its development over the course of the text, including how it emerges and is shaped and refined by specific details; provide an objective summary of the text.
Math
Understanding Ratios and Proportions through Climate Migration
Created by: Consuelo Johnson
Grade level: 6-8
NC Standards:
6.RP.3 Use ratio reasoning with equivalent whole-number ratios to solve real-world and mathematical problems
6.RP.1 Understand the concept of a ratio and use ratio language
6.SP.5 Summarize numerical data sets in relation to their context.
Science
Ensuring Biodiversity, One Seed at a Time
Created by: Wendi Pillars
Grade level/Subject Area: 6-8 Earth Science; 9-10 Biology
NC Standards:
Bio.2.1: Analyze the interdependence of living organisms within their environments.
Bio.2.2: Understand the impact of human activities on the environment (one generation affects the next).
EEn.2.7: Explain how the lithosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere individually and collectively affect the biosphere.
EEn.2.8: Evaluate human behaviors in terms of how likely they are to ensure the ability to live sustainably on Earth.
To Understand Water Use and Depletion in Mexico City from Pre-Colonial Times to the Present
Created by: Maureen Legaria
Grade level/Subject Area: 9-10 Biology
NC Standards:
Bio 2.2.2: Explain how the use, protection, and conservation of natural resources by humans impact the environment from one generation to the next.
EEn 2.4.1: Evaluate human influences on freshwater availability.
EEn 2.6.3: Analyze the impacts that human activities have on global climate change.
Understanding Human Population Growth and Decline in the Face of Climate Change
Created by: Lydia Paulk
Grade Level/Subject Area: 11-12 AP Environmental Science
College Board Standards:
3.5 Explain how resource availability affects population growth.
3.7 Explain factors that affect total fertility rate in human populations.
3.8 Explain how human populations experience growth and decline.
9.5 Explain how changes in climate, both short- and long- term, impact ecosystems.
Climate Change in Latin America Mini Unit
Created by: Kristen Davenport
Grade level: 9-12; Earth and Environmental Science; Biology
NC Standards:
ESS.EES.5: Evaluate how human consumption patterns impact Earth’s systems.
Bio.5: Understand ecosystem dynamics, functioning, and resilience.
Bio.5.2: Engage in argument from evidence to evaluate various solutions to reduce the impact of human activities on biodiversity and ecosystem health.
Social Studies
Latin America: Climate in Crisis
Created by: Elizabeth Viernes
Grade level/Subject Area: 9; World History
NC Standards:
WH.G.2: Analyze the intentional and unintentional consequences of human-environment interaction.
WH.G.2.2: Differentiate technological innovation and human-environment interaction in terms of intentional and unintentional consequences, now and in the past.
World Languages
The Silent Death of the World’s Languages (Spanish and English)
Created by: Evelyn Rivera
Grade level: 9-12
American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) Standards:
Standard 1: 1.1 Interpersonal Communication: Learners interact and negotiate meaning in spoken, signed, or written conversations to share information, reactions, feelings, and opinions.
Standard 2: 1.2 Interpretive Communication: Learners understand, interpret, and analyze what is heard, read, or viewed on a variety of topics.
Standard 3: 1.3 Presentational Communication: Learners present information, concepts, and ideas to inform, explain, persuade, and narrate on a variety of topics using appropriate media and adapting to various audiences of listeners, readers, or viewers.
Standard 4: 2.1 Relating Cultural Practices to Perspectives: Learners use the language to investigate, explain, and reflect on the relationship between the practices and perspectives of the cultures studied.
Standard 5: 3.2 Acquiring Information and Diverse Perspectives: Learners access and evaluate information and diverse perspectives that are available through the language and its cultures.
