The Family Car :: Related Topics

Class discussion of the Family Car lesson may spark your students’ interest in many other topics.  Here are some for which teachers have requested more resources. You can find links to many more useful sites at this comprehensive resource.

Climate Change

Arguably the most critical issue ever to face our species, resources on climate change are well represented on the web.

• An ESL lesson for fairly advanced students: http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/0511/051119-climate_change-e.html

• The US EPA has a kids’ site with a lot of activities and games: http://epa.gov/climatechange/kids/index.html

• There are some interactive activities as well as facts at http://www.koshlandscience.org/exhibitgcc/index.jsp

• Another cool interactive site that is more basic is http://globalwarming.enviroweb.org/games/climpuzzle/index.html  

• There’s a scary map of the world projected for 2050 http://www.guardian.co.uk/globalwarming/graphic/0,7367,397048,00.html

• And a chart showing how global warming happens: http://www.guardian.co.uk/globalwarming/graphic/0,7367,397352,00.html

• An activity guide for field trips about global warming & related topics is at http://www.field-trips.org/sci/green/index.htm

• This British site has activities, games, and a poem: http://www.britishcouncil.org/learnenglish-central-themes-global-warming.htm

• Here’s a link to a book you can buy for k-12 level classroom resources: http://www.greenteacher.com/tacc.html

• This site is for teachers at middle school level http://commtechlab.msu.edu/sites/letsnet/noframes/Subjects/science/B5U1.html

• The Union of Concerned Scientists has prepared a comprehensive Curriculum Guide for grades 9-12 http://www.climatehotmap.org/curriculum/index.html

• This link is also good for general info about climate change for teachers k-12  http://hdgc.epp.cmu.edu/teachersguide/teachersguide.htm

• You’ll find more links at http://serc.carleton.edu/climatechange/ It’s a library of digital resources about climate change.

• These links came from a teacher’s site, http://www.everythingesl.net/  She has other cool stuff there as well, but one of her links is Teaching Resources: Earth Science, Cancer, the Brain, Veterans and More The following links were at that site, and there’s other stuff there too.


• Climate Discovery Teacher's Guide includes lessons on how the sun's magnetism interacts with the earth's magnetic field, how scientists study ancient climates, how the earth system works and how climate changes over time, and how climate models are used to predict the future of earth's climate. (National Center for Atmospheric Research, supported by National Science Foundation)


• Visualization Projects includes simulations of more than 40 phenomena: sea ice and CO2, climate change (230-year period), clouds and precipitation, coral reef evolution (starting 21,000 years ago), universal fire shape, fire twirl and burst behavior, tornadoes, thunderstorms, typhoons, El Niño events, greenhouse gases and sulfate aerosols, polar vortex breakdown, CO2 and temperature, CFCs in the ocean, cloud evolution (7-day period), daily weather in the U.S., and more. (National Center for Atmospheric Research, supported by National Science Foundation)


• Arctic and Antarctic looks at research being conducted in the two polar regions of earth. These vast, icy, inhospitable environments provide "natural laboratories" for scientists to study basic questions: How did the universe begin? Is earth's climate changing? What are the limits of life in extreme environments? (National Science Foundation)

Car-Free

A San Francisco teacher made the excellent point that The Family Car lesson might seem to encourage car ownership, an unintended and environmentally unsound consequence!  Here are some sites that explain the value of living without automobiles:

• http://www.bikesatwork.com/carfree/index.html is one of the most accessible sites we’ve found.  It has interesting facts on the environmental effects and also the costs of maintaining automobiles, and useful tips on how to live without a car.

• www.carfree.com  grew out of a book called Carfree Cities that “proposes a delightful solution to the vexing problem of urban automobiles.”  It has many interesting feature, and a comprehensive links page.

• www.worldcarfree.net is “the hub of the global carfree movement.” It has information on activities and events all over the world.

• An interesting book on the topic is Asphalt Nation: How the Automobile Took over America and How We Can Take It Back, by Jane Holtz Kay.

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