The Polar Flood

If the polar ice caps were to melt, there would be a disastrous chain of events that will be unleashed on the Earth that we are unprepared for.  Because the so much water is stored in the ice caps, it allows for land to be available for land life to be possible, if the water is released, it will flood the low lying areas that for millennia, people and animals have called home.  The importance of the ice caps go far beyond the potential flooding, the cooling of the world's oceans could lead to the breakdown of currents that run the entire global system.  If warm and cold currents were to be altered, life giving nutrients would not be available to the global ecosystem leading to systemic bio collapse.  We don't fully understand the unknown consequences of the ice caps melting but studying it in depth will help us better prepare for what scientists are now calling inevitable. 

As students investigate this it is important to provide many avenues of inquiry as possible.  The science behind global warming is vast taking into account many different field.  How does a teacher provide for as many inquiry opportunities within the content without becoming overwhelming.  For example, having students study climate change through the lens of meteorology, astronomy, oceanographers, atmospheric science along with practical sciences such as engineering.  All these fields are important in understanding the larger picture but incorporating them in the classroom is difficult.

This week I had to write a lesson plan for my science course.  It was a challenging task because I wanted to think of a good meaningful experiment to use in my lesson.  In fourth grade, they are tested in science and one of the big performance tasks involves conductors and insulators.  This is a meaningful concepts that explains their world and helps prepare them for the big assessment.  As I used the five E's strategy that our professor guided us toward, it made me think about what the student's experience was instead of my own, it made me start thinking about what their answers to my prompts would be and how that could be a way to drive the instruction.  I usually plan my lesson with an objective in mind and what I need to do to get there, but this made me think more about the student's experiences.  If I were to implement this lesson in my classroom, I would face language issues that may impede the understanding of what I want the kids to learn.  But using visual references hopefully this can be overcome.