It’s not just that it’s part of the curriculum: talking about climate change is unavoidable in real life as well, but how much do we really know about it? This lesson plan intends to cover some of the main environmental problems that our planet is facing and how to tackle them before it is too late.
Step 1: Games to revise vocabulary
1. WHEEL OF FORTUNE: GUESS THE WORD
Before we dive into the environmental problems, students do some vocabulary games to revise words and expressions relevant to the topic.
The first game is a personal version of the Wheel of Fortune.
The rules of the game are as follows:
- Divide the class into small groups. One person in each group will be the speaker, who has the final say to give the definite answer.
- Show the panel with the wheel and the first board of the game “hangman”, where they will see the number of letters of the word or expression they have to guess and a picture that gives them a hint.
- The first group spins the wheel, and things will depend on where they land.
- If they land on a part with points, they can choose a consonant. If they guess, they will get the points multiplied by the times the consonant appears in the word or expression and they can spin the wheel again. They might land on a portion of the wheel that gives them no points. In that case, they miss their turn.
- They can accumulate points with every turn, but they also risk bankruptcy and will lose everything, so if they know the answer they should try to guess the word, that way they do win the points they have accumulated and it’s the next group’s turn.
2. ANAGRAMS
STEP 2: SPEAKING ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE AND ITS CAUSES
How much do students know about climate change? Are they worried about it? Let’s talk about it.
- As a first approach, students look at pictures illustrating different environmental problems (from WWF.org and working in pairs discuss their impact on climate change and how worrying each of them is in their opinion.
- Then students share their notes in groups with people from different pairs. It all depends on the number of students, but the aim is to brainstorm as many ideas as possible.
STEP 3: READING AND VOCABULARY
- After that, they read the texts that go with some of the photos from the previous exercise and compare with the ideas they have been discussing in groups.
- To check how good their memory is, they try to answer some questions about the content of the short texts. (Note: Even if they are short, the exercise is demanding.)
- They check their answers by doing this vocabulary exercise:
Step 4: Listening
We don’t want to end the lesson with only bad news about the future of our planet, so the last exercise is a positive touch: how human intervention can benefit the ecosystem.
Watch the video and take notes to answer the following questions:
1. What is a “trophic cascade”?
2. When were wolves reintroduced?
3. How long had the wolves been absent?
4. How did the deer’s behavior change after the reintroduction of wolves?
5. What happened to the height of trees?
6. Why did beavers come?
7. Why were there more rabbits?
8. Why did the rivers change?
9. Apart from the ecosystem, what else did the wolves do?
10. What is the conclusion we get?
Learn more: Read The Guardian article about the topic
Step 5: Mediation
Students read the NRDC.org story by Jeff Turrentine explaining the factors that are driving climate change and take notes and be ready to explain them.
They can also watch this video.
Task:
“A friend of yours is a climate change denier. You have done so much research about the topic that you cannot understand how they can refuse to see what is obvious. That’s why you have decided to send them some voice messages giving them arguments that prove that climate change is an unfortunate reality.”
As an alternative to voice messages, students can write a Twitter thread explaining each argument in a short text as if they were posting it for real. They can use this website to make it look authentic: https://www.tweetgen.com/create/tweet.html