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Current and future Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, and Medicine (STEMM) students must grapple with one of the most pressing scientific issues of the century: climate change. Teaching about climate change with our youngest learners requires preparation, and planting roots to foster growth, innovation, and sustainability. Building a community garden with elementary students is a way to act towards climate justice as it reminds us about how all living things are part of an interconnected system. This article describes a fifth-grade climate change action project that was part of a unit that aligns with the state science standards and the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), focused on how science learning can be used to protect the Earth’s resources and local environments. The anchoring phenomenon and lessons of the unit highlighted the annual migration of the monarch butterflies, a local endangered species and phenomenon. By planting milkweed in the garden, students learned about migration, life cycles, greenhouse gases, and the survival of monarch butterflies. This article provides educators with ideas and practical suggestions for building a garden and an overview of how the project can be implemented within a school community.
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Examining the Social Aspect of Climate Change through Mathematics
We designed an instructional module that seamlessly integrates mathematics, environmental science, and technology to help students think critically about climate change. The results from a design experiment in a sixth-grade classroom show that our tasks not only enhanced students' covariational reasoning in mathematics but also helped students identify the different traits of climate change they encounter every day in the news media.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1742125
- PAR ID:
- 10182053
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- 2019 IEEE Integrated STEM Education Conference (ISEC)
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 239 to 244
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.1109/ISECon.2019.8882109
