Science at key stage 3 (Year 9)
Unit 9G: Environmental chemistry
Section 8: Is global warming happening?
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Objectives |
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- to use secondary sources to answer scientific questions
- how to decide whether evidence is good enough to answer a question
- to evaluate evidence put forward by others
- to discuss and evaluate conflicting evidence to arrive at a considered viewpoint
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Activities |
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Outcomes |
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Children: |
- Present pupils with selected and simplified information,
eg on video, about global changes in climate and ask groups to use it to prepare answers to questions,
eg
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Have there been climate changes in the past?
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What were the effects of these?
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Is the Earth warming up? What evidence is there for this?
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If the Earth is warming, what are the possible causes of this? What role does the burning of fossil fuels play? What evidence is there?
- Ask pupils to make brief presentations of their answers to the questions, making clear the evidence on which they are based. Ask other pupils to ask questions about the evidence.
- Discuss pupils' presentations with them and examine the ways in which fuel is used and the impact of this on the environment and ways in which fuel consumption might be usefully limited.
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- identify key trends in data and draw conclusions from these
- explain how they used the evidence to draw conclusions
- recognise where data is not sufficiently strong to support conclusions or can be interpreted in another way
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Points to note |
- There are CD-ROMs offering information about global warming from a variety of perspectives.
- This activity could be developed as role play, with pupils playing scientists who have different opinions. With some groups it may be helpful to prepare the information, suggest conclusions which can be drawn from it, and challenge pupils to identify whether the data supports the conclusions drawn.
- Pupils may confuse the greenhouse effect and the hole in the ozone layer. It may be helpful to provide them with a simplified explanation of both effects.
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This unit is divided into sections. Each section contains a sequence of
activities with related objectives and outcomes. You can view this unit by
moving through the sections or print/download the whole unit.
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