Last Updated: Tuesday, February 23, 2021

Weather and climate change

Tags: Learning and assessment Primary Citizenship Learning for Sustainability (LfS) Resilience Social Studies Technologies Sciences

What is this?

The purpose of this online resource is to provide practitioners from early level onwards with high-quality, accurate and topical resources to help them teach about climate change within Curriculum for Excellence.

Climate change is a complex moral, scientific, social and technological issue that is one of the defining issues of the 21st century. It is essential that children and young people are given the opportunity to learn about this important issue and develop informed opinions and views as global citizens. In addition to being explicitly mentioned in many experiences and outcomes, climate change offers a stimulating, challenging and relevant context for learning across the curriculum.

Who is this for?

Practitioners in primary schools and also learners in primary and secondary schools undertaking project work on climate change.

How to use this learning and assessment resource to improve practice:

Climate change has proved to be a controversial and political issue and a proportion of the UK public remain sceptical about the scientific evidence used to support it – despite the fact that this evidence has received the backing of the vast majority of the global scientific community.

This resource has been designed to help teachers improve their practice in learning and teaching relating to climate change. It is vital that our young people are equipped with the skills to think critically and question how the media reports climate change. As global citizens, they need to be able to evaluate environmental, scientific and technological information in order to develop informed opinions about this issue.

Downloads

PDF file: Weather and climate change: Climate (474 KB)
PDF file: Weather and climate change: Climate change (685 KB)
PDF file: Weather and climate change: Energy (710 KB)
PDF file: Weather and climate change: Make a difference (616 KB)
PDF file: Weather and climate change: Weather (520 KB)

Videos

Weather and climate change: Climate
Weather and climate change: Climate change
Weather and climate change: Energy
Weather and climate change: Make a difference
Weather and climate change: Weather

Improvement questions

  • How can we make climate change relevant, meaningful and of interest to learners?
  • What steps will we need to take to deepen our own knowledge of climate change?
  • How can we use climate change to encourage learners to explore and establish values such as wisdom, justice, compassion and integrity?
  • How can we use climate change as a context to support a whole school approach to learning for sustainability?

Related links

​Exploring climate change: Learning for sustainability