Teacher & Student Materials > Powering a Warming Planet
How does the Carbon Cycle affect Earth?
50 minutes
To tie together the previous lesson (2.1) with the learning objectives of the first learning set to give a cohesive presentation of the carbon cycle.
Students will use their carbon cycle models to answer a cause-and-effect question and explore the value of trees to draw conclusions about how carbon moves through the Earth.
Carbon moves through Earth in various forms through a series of process (respiration, photosynthesis, decaying organisms)
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Materials: Slide Deck: 2.2 The Carbon Cycle
Read the few sentences on slides 2 and 3 about the carbon cycle, and ask questions about the model to make sure students have an even understanding of what the model is communicating to them.
Have students work through the chart and answer the question on slide 4 in pairs or small groups. A potential answer is on a skipped slide (slide 5).
Materials: 2.2 What is the value of a tree?
This activity is used to push students to think about the consequences of excessive deforestation and where the mass of a tree comes from, which further reiterates that carbon travels through Earth in various forms.
Lesson 2.1 may need to be modified to fit your schedule, so this activity can be assigned during 2.1 and serve as a time filler if needed.
This is a very brief explanation that animals (including humans) take in carbon as well through our diet, so we should also represent it in the model.
This lesson is not intended to teach food webs.
Slide 12 has a graph of CO2 Emissions from Saudi Arabia, the United States, Germany, China, and Israel. Slides 13 and 14 ask students to identify the trends noticed between developed countries and developing countries. Students should notice that Saudi Arabia and China have increased CO2 emissions in recent years, whereas the United States, Germany, and Israel have consistently been decreasing for a couple of decades.
Students are then asked to think about the connection between CO2 emissions and industrialization. This is important because we, as a society, don’t want to stop moving forward. We just need to figure out better technologies for industrializing and everyday living. Slide 15 just shows the United States, Germanys, and Israel are declining, so there is hope for reducing CO2 emissions.
Lastly, slide 16 introduces the culminating project.
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