Designing a Community

17.A Apply scientific principles to design a process/system that the school can undertake to reduce the vulnerability to climate change impacts (e.g., high heat, changing water resources) in the short-term and contribute to rebalancing carbon in the long-term.

The example plan below shows suggested ideas.

If students don’t immediately know what to list for a ‘checklist’ item, offer the first example. When you share the first example, explain how the checklist item would help meet the criteria. Then allow students to talk with a partner to brainstorm the next checklist item. You may need to revisit a resilience plan from Lesson 16 as a concrete example to look at as the class builds the checklist.

Orient them to the left column, criteria of what an effective plan does, and the right column, their checklist for what to include to meet the criteria.

What an effective plan does (criteria)

What we should include (checklist)

Say, One thing that we said that makes an effective plan is that it explains the problem that needs to be solved to the community. Let’s add “Defines the problem we’re trying to solve” to our criteria of what makes a plan effective. What could we specifically explain in our plans to help define the problem for our community? Listen for students to suggest:

• Problems with changing precipitation, such as droughts, floods, less snowpack, reduced groundwater, etc.
• Problems with rising temperatures and/or more frequent heat events.
• Problems with certain areas of town or certain industries being more affected than others.
• Add these ideas to the checklist (as shown in the example below).

Add additional criteria and checklist items. Follow your students’ ideas, but you can also suggest ideas to students as you move through the co-construction process. As you complete the criteria checklist, intersperse opportunities for students to turn and talk or convene with a smaller group before sharing ideas aloud in whole group discussion.

As you build a list with your class, aim for inclusion of the following three components:

• Defining the problem or problems/Tell people about the problem.
• Teaching people about what’s causing the problem(s).
• Directing people to solutions and telling them what solutions could be taken.

Students may also suggest:

• Getting people to care about the problem.
• Being clear and specific about solutions to the problem.
• Including solutions in different parts or sectors of the community.

A final class checklist might look like the example below. Your class’ checklist could include more or different examples depending on the identified needs of your community. This checklist will become an important class artifact because (1) it represents the evaluation criteria that students have jointly agreed upon, and (2) can serve as a rubric for you to assess students’ plans.

What an effective plan does

What we should include

• Tells people about the problem(s).
• Our community will experience more drought or flood, or both.
• Some seasons might become drier or wetter than before.
• Some areas or some people in our community might be at more risk or more impacted.
• Teaches people about what’s causing the problem.
• Carbon dioxide is building up in the atmosphere.
• Carbon dioxide traps energy in the atmosphere that causes temperatures to rise.
• Warmer temperatures means more evaporation and water vapor in the atmosphere, but it doesn’t fall evenly.
• Photosynthesis is one way to take CO2 out of the atmosphere but there are also ways to reduce putting it in the atmosphere. Some combination is necessary to solve the problem.
• Directs people to solutions.

Share solutions their community can take to:

reduce CO2 going into air or take CO2 out of air

be prepared for higher temperatures

be prepared for more/less precipitation

• Give people more than one way to help.
• Include different actions that different people can take in different situations.

When you get to the “Direct people to solutions” display slide F. Use the following prompts to scaffold student ideas for solutions:

What were the different kinds of solutions we saw in the example resilience plans?

What solutions make sense for our community given the changes we are experiencing?

What can we do for long-term carbon rebalancing? What can we do for changes happening right now…