Climate Change Lesson 14 : Climate Change in the News

1. Meet the Researcher

The MEECS Climate Change Resource DVD includes brief biographies of climate scientists, and a form for students to gather information about each scientist.

2. Plan a climate change symposium 

Tell students that they will be planning a mock symposium where climate researchers in Michigan will be invited to present. Each student will find out about three researchers using the scientist profiles available on the MEECS Climate Change Resource DVD and the Meet the Researcher student activity. Additional scientist profiles are also available within all journals of the Natural Inquirer. Students will meet in groups to discuss which researchers will be selected for the symposium.

Have the groups design a poster, PowerPoint, or brochure to publicize their symposium. Elements needed are: what students hope to accomplish in the symposium, who the audience will be, and the agenda, which includes the name of the researchers and the title of their talks.

Each group will present their symposium plans to the class describing why their speaker selections were made. The class could vote on which symposium would be the most informative and interesting to attend.

Other sources to identify researchers

– Lists of participants in meetings about climate change

– Presenters at meetings and conferences

– Various universities in Michigan

– Researchers’ individual websites

– Michigan Climate Coalition

– GLISA (Great Lakes Integrated Sciences and Assessments Center)

3. Have students look up news articles from 5-10 years ago or compare articles between rural and urban papers. Complete the news analysis and related scientific study for 2 articles from 5-10 years ago or comparing a rural and urban paper. How have newspaper articles remained the same? What has changed?

4. Look at Newseum (see e-Appendix for link) and click on Today’s Front Pages to view the front page titles of newspapers from around the world. Ask students to identify which type of stories seem most popular (ex. Reports on scientific findings, economic or social impacts of climate change, etc.).

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