Global Systems Science – Life and Climate

Topics:  Earth’s Atmosphere, Climate Change, Evolution and Relationship of Life and Climate

Source:  Lawrence Hall of Science, with funding from the U.S. Dept. of Energy, the National Science Foundation, and NASA.

Web Address:  http://www.lawrencehallofscience.org/GSS/ (book can be ordered or reviewed at this address)

Grade Levels:  9-12

Learning Strategies:  Read and comprehend; investigation activities and experiments; cooperative learning.

Frameworks Connections:

Science and Technology/Engineering

• Earth and Space Science, Grades 9-10

  1. Matter and Energy in the Earth System
  3. Earth Processes and Cycles

• Biology, Grades 9-10

  6. Ecology

Mathematics

• Number Sense and Operations

Cost:  $7 per student book, $12 per teacher guide.  All content can be downloaded for free for review.

Description: Life and Climate is one book out of nine in the Global Systems Science package and is designed for high school students.  The books were created by the Lawrence Hall of Science at the University of California, Berkeley.  They offer an “interdisciplinary, integrated course” that involves students actively in learning, considering economic, political, and ethical issues and introducing students to male and female scientists from a variety of backgrounds.

Life and Climate is about “how our atmosphere and climate came to be as they are today; how life on Earth evolved; and how the evolution of life and climate have affected each other since the Earth was formed.”  There are 13 chapters, with several activities in each chapter.  The activities are either experiments and demonstrations or group activities in which students must analyze and apply what they read.  One of the intentions of the book is to give students a background in how and why the planet changed in the past in order to understand the changes in the environment and climate that we observe today.

The book requires detailed reading, and a teacher would need to write lesson plans and determine how best to incorporate the book into his or her curriculum.