In this activity, students evaluate climate change narratives for content and story-telling qualities before creating their own narrative on a severe weather event.
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Instruct students to write their own thoughts in the student guide after each video before sharing their ideas as a class.
To fully engage in both the subjects of focus and the writing, it may be helpful to split this lesson into three or four class periods.
This lesson could be useful as a formative assessment of student learning around narrative writing. It would need to be expanded if used at the beginning of teaching narrative writing.
Students first watch a scientific video explaining how storms are increasing in severity due to climate change. This video supports an understanding of how climate change can cause increasingly destructive and unpredictable weather patterns.
Students will then analyze first-person narratives about severe weather from young people from across the United States. These 2-3 minutes videos explain the real experiences of young people who have lost their homes and sense of security due to severe and unpredictable weather events.
The 12 minute podcast highlights the lived experience of racial disparities and injustices in climate change.
Students will use both these objective and subjective elements to write and present their own narratives based on their experiences of storms or severe weather.
This activity does not use objective data and instead supports inquiry, observation of the social impacts of climate change, and a vivid self-reflection of climate vulnerability.
Passed initial science review - expert science review pending.
This activity engages students in narrative writing.
This lesson could be co-taught in a science or ELA class, or as an ELA-specific lesson.
A teacher and student guide are included in addition to a rubric for the student narrative activity. The guides are thoughtfully drafted and include a diverse set of media content related to different weather events from young people around the United States and territories.
The lesson will require more class periods than indicated (110 min) depending on student skill in narrative writing. This lesson does not provide structure around teaching narrative-style writing at the high school level.
Consider bringing in stories from your state or region to consider local extreme weather events.
This lesson requires a trauma-informed approach as the events and stories focus on intense and often very sad events. Students may have experienced similar events and the associated emotions could surface through teaching this lesson. It is important to make space for emotional processing and to know strong reactions to this lesson are possible.
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