BAMOS
Mar 2020
All set up for the workshop with teachers at AMOS 2020. Source: Sanaa Hobeichi.
with them could be used in calculations of the energy that
could be harnessed from renewable sources—solar, wind and
hydro. Rowena Bullio (CSIRO) addressed “Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander Histories and Cultures” by running a conversation
with the workshop participants about their engagement with
Indigenous people.
The afternoon was dedicated to the groups consolidating their
work and reporting back on their lesson plans. It was only then
that the full achievements of the workshop became clear. Group
after group stood up and presented well‑developed lesson
plans for school subjects including Biology, Chemistry, Earth
and Environmental Science, Geography and English. Some
groups were able to precisely map their lesson plans to points
in the Australian Curriculum. For example, a Year 9 Chemistry
lesson plan used the example of chemical reactions related
to atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations to address
curriculum point ACSSU179 (“Chemical reactions, including
combustion and the reactions of acids, are important in both
non‑living and living systems and involve energy transfer”).
The plan also exposed students to one of Australia’s major
contributions to international climate science by incorporating
graphs of atmospheric carbon dioxide data from CSIRO’s Cape
Grim air monitoring station. Some of the lesson plans used
novel combinations of student activities. For example, a Year
11 Biology lesson plan combined experiments involving Coke
and Mentos and experiments involving the running of a simple
online climate model. As well as educating the students about
the effect of climate change on the uptake of carbon by the
ocean and, it is designed to help them develop the ability to
identify and construct scientific questions for investigation and
learn how to organise data in a meaningful way.
At the end of the workshop it was clear that it had not only
produced an impressive array of draft lesson plans, but also
that the process of producing them had been a lot of fun! Many
participants commented on the energy in the interactions
between the teachers and climate scientists. The teachers
enjoyed having the opportunity of working with climate
scientists and vice versa.
So, what’s next? Over the coming months the workshop team
will be pushing the lesson plans towards completion, getting
them reviewed for science content and then submitting them
to the TROP ICSU repository. In the longer term, there’s an eye
to promoting the lesson plans and how they were developed
at teaching conferences and running further lesson plan
development workshops (Anyone for “Climate Across the
Curriculum” at the AMOS 2021 conference?).
The workshop team welcomes engagement with the readership
of BAMOS on “Climate Across the Curriculum”, including
feedback, questions and ideas. The team can be reached via
[email protected].
Acknowledgements
The workshop received generous support from AMOS, ARC
Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes (CLEX), the Schools
Weather and Air Quality Project, the Monash Climate Change
Communication Research Hub and the University of Western
Australia (UWA).
The success of the workshop relied on the time and enthusiasm
of the participants. The “Climate Across the Curriculum” team
thanks you all!
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