Teaching Urban High School Students Global Climate Change Information and Graph Interpretation Skills Using Evidence from the Scientific Literature

Abstract

Curriculum materials designed to provide students with practice interpreting plotted evidence of global climate change were developed using graphs from the scientific literature and tested with one hundred urban high school students from a high-poverty school in a major northern city in the US. The graph interpretation lessons followed a constructivist-teaching learning cycle format. Additional activities included watching videos related to climate change and completing a graphing exercise. Students displayed motivation during the lessons along with significant improvement from pretest to posttest in graph interpretation skills and content knowledge of organisms affected by climate change. Student motivation was revealed by task commitment during the exercises as well as requests for additional activities related to investigating environmental effects on organisms and stopping global climate change. The efficacy of the lessons is attributed to the concrete, manipulative nature of the graph interpretation sets, real-world connections of the topic, the focus on interesting organisms, the opportunity for students to express their views, and the use of multi-media.