This is the first unit of a special collection of free climate change lessons for science teachers. The storyline and set of lessons (see details below) are about Monarch butterflies, how their declining population is linked to climate change, and what kids can do to reverse climate change and save the Monarchs.
The unit challenge and culminating experience are key components unique to each Green Ninja Unit, and they help support teachers in creating a stimulating learning environment. The unit challenge provides a context for the entire unit. The challenge is mentioned throughout the unit to remind students of the purpose of their learning. The culminating experience provides students an opportunity to extend their science learning through an open-ended project that encourages innovation and creativity in solving a real-world problem. An example of the unit challenge, science methods, and culminating experience are outlined below.
Unit Challenge - Design a way to protect monarch butterflies.
Science Methods - Ask questions to clarify evidence of the factors that have caused the rise in global temperatures. Analyze and interpret data of butterfly migration and global temperature patterns. Develop models of materials at different temperatures.
Culminating Experience - Students develop an action plan to protect monarch butterflies.
In this unit, students learn that monarch butterflies are migrating later each year and that their populations are declining. As students progress through the unit, they connect these changes to human activities. Students analyze data of monarch migration patterns and temperature. They use a simulation and develop models to understand temperature. Students play the Green Ninja Carbon Command game and participate in a metaphor activity to explore global warming and the greenhouse effect. For the culminating experience, students design an action plan to protect monarch butterflies and present their solutions at the Save the Monarchs Action Conference.
Beautiful monarch butterflies are unique in that they are the only known butterflies to make a two-way migration as birds do. Other butterflies can overwinter as larvae (caterpillars), pupae, or even as adults. However, monarchs cannot survive the cold winters of northern climates. As fall temperatures begin to drop, monarchs know it is time to travel south for the winter. Monarchs in eastern North America travel to mountains in Mexico, where they roost in oyamel fir trees. Monarchs in western North America overwinter in California. Eastern monarchs are the focus of this unit.
There are several generations of monarch butterflies born each year. Adult monarchs born in the first, second, and third generations typically live 2-6 weeks. They feed on nectar and reproduce. The generation of monarchs that makes the long fall migration to Mexico is the fourth generation. They are born in the summer, and as temperatures begin to cool in the fall, these monarchs do not reproduce as the other generations do. Instead, they prepare to fly south. Once this generation arrives in Mexico, the butterflies cluster together for warmth in oyamel fir tree forests. When temperatures being to rise in the spring, this same generation of butterflies begins the journey north for the summer. As they journey north, the monarchs mate and lay eggs to produce the first generation of the new year. The first generation continues on the journey north. The journey north is completed by the second and third generations.
Over the past two decades, much data have been collected by community scientists who report monarch sightings throughout the year. The data enable us to see that monarch migration patterns are changing—monarchs are beginning the fall migration later in the fall and arriving in Mexico later each year. Additionally, the number of monarchs overwintering in Mexico is declining. Multiple factors are likely contributing to these phenomena, and students investigate these factors as they navigate the unit. For example, students analyze butterfly migration maps and regional temperatures to understand the relationship between monarchs and temperature. They look for patterns in the data and determine that changes in temperature affect when monarchs migrate.
Saving the Monarchs is the first unit of our Climate Change model and introduces students and teachers to the Green Ninja curriculum. Green Ninja's mission is to inspire the next generation of environmental stewards through a deep understanding of science and the environment. As in our regular middle school curriculum, this unit is designed around a storyline and ends with a culminating experience. The storyline of this unit addresses changes in the monarch butterfly population, and the unit culminates with students designing solutions to protect monarchs. The final project gives students the opportunity to solve a real-world problem, which makes their learning meaningful and rewarding.
This unit also incorporates other features unique to Green Ninja. In Chapter 3, as an introduction to global climate change, students play the Green Ninja Carbon Command video game. The game is a model designed to help students explore factors that have caused global temperatures to rise. In Chapter 4, as an introduction to studying what a carbon footprint is, students watch the Green Ninja video Footprint Renovation. In Chapter 5, students are tasked with designing solutions to protect monarch butterflies. As part of this chapter, they are introduced to people who are working to protect different organisms, including a group of students in the Save the Fishes video. The Green Ninja games and videos add variety, humor, and quirkiness to the curriculum and are well-received by students. These materials have an underlying science element with a focus on environmental solutions, and they help build the storyline of each unit.
As with the regular Green Ninja curriculum, this Saving the Monarchs unit connects classroom learning to everyday experiences in the home. For example, in Chapter 4 of this unit, students analyze their personal carbon footprints. This requires students to consider energy use in their homes as well as the type of transportation their families use in daily life. Parents can participate in discussions with their students on how to make their homes and transportation habits more energy efficient. For a deeper connection, students and their parents can utilize an online carbon footprint calculator for a more thorough analysis of their family's carbon footprint. A good example can be found at https://coolclimate.berkeley.edu/calculator.
Students are also tasked with creating public service announcements to educate people about their energy use and suggest ways to minimize their carbon footprint. Students can share their PSA with parents and others in their family prior to sharing with classmates.
In this unit, students' understanding of energy is expanded from prior learning. Up to this point, students understand that moving objects have energy, and the faster an object moves, the more energy it has (4-PS3). Students understand that energy moves from place to place (4-PS3). In this unit, the term kinetic energy is introduced as the energy of motion, and students learn of the relationship between temperature and the total energy of a system (PS3.A). Students also begin to track energy as it transfers through physical interactions (PS3.B).
The growth and development of organisms is another core idea included in this unit. In elementary school, students learn that organisms have a life cycle: birth, growth, reproduction, and death (3-LS1). In this unit, students explore specific monarch behaviors and characteristics that increase their chances of survival (LS1.B).
Global climate change is the overarching core idea of this unit. Up to this point, students have had no direct instruction on global warming and how human activities affect global warming. Students have, however, learned that humans have impacts on Earth systems (4, 5-ESS3). This unit introduces students to specific human activities that increase carbon dioxide levels in Earth's atmosphere and how this causes rising global temperatures.
This unit can be adapted for upper elementary level students. The data analysis in Chapter 1 can be simplified to focus only on the relationship between temperatures in Cape May, NJ, and the time of the monarch migration. Temperature graphing and analyzing trends can be done together as a class. The content of Chapter 2 can be reduced to focusing on what temperature means and looking at global temperature patterns over the past 100 years. Students should come away with the understanding that Earth's climate is getting warmer, the temperature is rising. In this chapter, students can learn that monarchs like to be where it is warm because they are cold-blooded and get their energy from the warm air. Rather than diving into the concept of thermal energy transfer in Chapter 3, students can participate in the blanket experiment to demonstrate that the blanket traps their body heat and keeps them warm. This activity serves as a metaphor for what happens with the Earth. Certain gases in Earth's atmosphere trap heat to keep Earth warm. Then, in Chapter 4, this is extended to describe what happens when too much heat is trapped. In the blanket metaphor, the person gets too warm. In reality, more of the heat-trapping gases in Earth's atmosphere will cause the Earth to get too warm. Students can participate in the card activity of this chapter to visualize how human activities impact the amount of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere. The Grade 4 ESS3 performance expectation can be used to emphasize how humans use natural resources, such as fossil fuels to produce energy, and that burning fossil fuels affects the environment by creating pollution and adding more heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere. For the action project in Chapter 5, we recommend that students work in groups of four. A template could be made for the presentation to provide students with more scaffolding. Alternatively, students could make posters that include the requirements of the final project and share them with classmates through a gallery walk.
This unit can also be adapted for high school students. As written, the curriculum provides students with the opportunity to ask questions, but then ultimately suggests questions that need to be answered. At the high school level, students should be tasked with generating their own questions. Additionally, rather than presenting students with the data in Chapters 1, 3, and 4, students should gather this evidence on their own in order to answer the questions they generate. Rather than guiding students to develop models of temperature through the PhET simulations, students should be able to develop their own models demonstrating their understanding of energy at both the macroscopic and microscopic scales. Students at the high school level can expand on the monarch lifecycle to include feedback systems that enable the monarchs to maintain homeostasis. Chapter 4 can be expanded to require students to analyze global climate models to make an evidence-based forecast of the current rate of climate change and associated future impacts to the monarchs and Earth systems in general. The action project could specifically require computational representation illustrating the relationship between monarchs and their environment and how this is being modified due to human activity.
The Saving the Monarchs Unit provides many different assessment opportunities. The interactive slide decks require student participation in multiple ways including short answers, graphing, filling in blanks, flowcharting, and developing models. At any point, the teacher can check on students' progress to provide a formative assessment of their understanding at that point. Additionally, each chapter has a set of review questions at the end. These questions focus on disciplinary core ideas as well as key concepts of the monarch storyline. The action project at the end of the unit is one type of summative assessment of the concepts covered in the entire unit. Students are provided with a rubric designed to help them demonstrate their understanding of the disciplinary core ideas of the unit and to encourage the use of science and engineering practices and crosscutting concepts as they complete the project. A formal summative assessment in included in which students put together everything they learned in the unit utilizing a systems model.
Some of the data for this unit was obtained from interactive maps on the Journey North website, https://journeynorth.org/. We encourage teachers to visit the site and, depending on the time of year, have students participate in reporting sightings of monarch butterflies. The sight includes other projects in addition to tracking monarch butterflies. Additionally, the site contains teaching tools!
If you live in an area where milkweed is native, visit a plant nursery working to repopulate milkweeds and other native plants in your region. If milkweed is not native in your region, you can still visit a native plant nursery to learn why it is important to repopulate native plants. As an alternative to visiting a nursery, invite a plant specialist to come to your classroom.
Encourage students to visit the CoolClimate network website and use the calculator, https://coolclimate.berkeley.edu/calculator. This would require parental assistance, but it is an excellent resource and also a great home-to-school connection.
