Introduction to Climate Resilience

The Introduction to Climate Resilience lessons create a foundation for elementary, middle, and high school students’ understanding of climate resilience and climate justice, against the backdrop of climate change. Each lesson activates students’ curiosity, compassion, prior knowledge, and critical thinking to explore how people and groups in their own community and around the world are affected by climate change and how they are addressing climate change through just and resilient collective action. In the lessons for elementary grades, students consider the ways in which people are impacted differently by weather emergencies and how we can help each other when weather emergencies occur. The middle- and high-school lessons help students consider how community climate resilience can be fostered and built up. Activities in these lessons include critically analyzing case studies on climate resilience around the U.S., role-playing a climate resilience town hall meeting, and planning collective action that contributes to addressing climate vulnerabilities and injustices in their school and wider community. All sessions can be taught independently or sequentially and can be adapted to fit the needs and contexts of individual classrooms. Teachers are encouraged to consider the unique climate challenges and community strengths that exist in their local context and to incorporate these into the lessons, in
order to help students connect what they are learning to their everyday lives.

On April 27, 2023 EcoRise hosted a webinar on NOAA Climate Tools and our Introduction to Climate Resilience Lessons with special guest Luann Dahlman from NOAA’s Climate Program Office. You can watch a recording of the webinar here