Next Generation Biospheres Classroom investigations into climate change
By Jimmy Karlan and Hannah Root
WHAT DO YOU THINK WOULD happen if we put a large number of crickets into your biosphere today?” After carefully constructing and sealing their biospheres and then monitoring them closely for three weeks, the 7th and 8th
“ -graders were bursting with predictions and ques-
tions. “They would have babies and then their babies would have babies and they would use up all of the resources!” “They would eat all of the plants, which would stop oxygen from being produced, and they would all die!” “They would breathe out so much carbon dioxide, which the plants would like for a little bit, but maybe it would be too much?” This group of thoughtful students at the Surry Village Charter School in Keene, New Hampshire, USA completed the Bio- sphere Challenge this fall as part of the lead author’s full-year program called Wild Treasures: Climate Change.1
The bio-
spheres that students built are working models of the world around us, with active natural processes and cycles happen- ing in the small confines of 10-gallon terrariums. Arranged along two sunny classroom windows, they are playgrounds where students explore concepts like systems, cycles, and resiliency. The Biosphere Challenge is an iterative cycle that begins with the introduction of a new challenge, and then leads students to test out their ideas, monitor the results, and learn from the outcomes. Over the course of a month and a half, the students build on their ideas week-to-week and come away with a concrete understanding of how our Earth’s sys- tems work and the consequences that can happen when they get out of balance. In teaching about climate change, it can be overwhelming
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to take this global-scale problem and turn it into an observ- able phenomenon in the classroom. How do we capture the complexities of the issue, while making it relevant and engag- ing for middle and high school students? And how do we present it in a way that empowers students instead of filling them with dread? The answer is not only simple and acces- sible, but it can fit into a 10-gallon tank on your classroom windowsill. The Biosphere Challenge is an inquiry-based curriculum
that was first designed as part of Professor Jimmy Karlan’s doctoral thesis to elicit students’ understanding of ecologi- cal concepts and theories about what has to happen to sus- tain life.2
“Create whatever you think has to happen so that
multiple generations of life can live inside a sealed 10-gal- lon container for as long as possible” is the challenge that has engaged students since 1995. But the next generation of this hands-on, minds-on inquiry is more relevant today as a climate change education tool than ever before. With the aid of carbon dioxide monitors and a compelling series of challenges, students use their biospheres to experience core scientific concepts of climate change firsthand. Identified by the authors with input from a variety of experts including Bill McKibben, Tom Wessels, and Michael Simpson, five simple scientific concepts make the complex global phenomenon of climate change accessible to budding middle and high school scientists. Play along with us as we walk through challenges for three of the five core concepts of climate change in detail: systems, cycles, and resilience. You can find lessons for the other two core concepts, feedback loops and exponen- tial growth, and much more at https://wildtreasuresclimat-
echange.weebly.com.
Green Teacher 122
Photos by Laura Jackson
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