Climate change and the greenhouse effect

Climate change is a global concern, with the potential to affect every aspect of our daily lives. It is a multidisciplinary, complex and controversial topic, however one with which students need to be familiar. When students leave school science they require an understanding of both the natural and the enhanced greenhouse effect and how this relates to climate change. This knowledge empowers them to make decisions and alter behaviours to help mitigate the consequences of climate change, helping not only themselves, but the global community.These learning activities were developed to educate secondary school students about the greenhouse effect and climate change and have been aimed at some of the most common alternative conceptions students hold about these topics. The activities are as follows:What is the greenhouse effect?This activity provides information addressing the common alternative conceptions students hold about the greenhouse effect and climate change.Greenhouse gases and car travelThis activity directly relates a student's personal car travel with a carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2eq) release of greenhouse gases, by using an online carbon calculator.Demonstrating the greenhouse effectThis experiment demonstrates that an atmosphere high in carbon dioxide increases in temperature more rapidly and remains at a higher temperature than an atmosphere low in carbon dioxide.Socioscientific issues and argumentationSocioscientific issues are topics with a scientific basis which are important to human society, such as climate change. Teaching students the skills of argumentation allows them to formulate a well-developed argument based on scientific fact when discussing these issues. Three scenarios have been included for students to consider.