The Climate Challenge Game

In a Nutshell:

Through a television-style quiz challenge, students learn about the basics, impacts, and solutions to global climate change in a fun, informative manner. This multi-part quiz can be used as an introduction to climate change, as a culmination of a climate change unit, or in sections during a climate change unit to interest and motivate students.

Goal:

To help students gain a better understanding of climate change, its impacts, and the solutions – global, local, and personal – to climate change.

Background Learning:

Teachers should be familiar with the basic science of climate change and its anticipated impacts as reviewed in:

• High School Backgrounder #1: Climate Change: What’s The Big Deal?
• High School Backgrounder #2: The Greenhouse Effect

Also useful are these backgrounders on solutions:

• High School Backgrounder #13: Renewable Energy Opportunities
• High School Backgrounder #14: Helping in your own way
• High School Backgrounder #15: What Schools can do!
• High School Backgrounder #17: Governments and Businesses: Walking the Talk

If this is the only lesson you are doing on climate change, your students should read:

• High School Backgrounder #1: Climate Change: What’s The Big Deal?

Learning Outcomes:

Click on the icon for your territory to review the learning outcomes that are addressed by this lesson:

Introduction to Lesson Plan:

This lesson is set up as a Quiz Game, following a pattern that students may have seen on TV. It runs through five rounds:

• Round 1: Climate Change Basics
• Round 2: Impacts
• Round 3: Solutions – Global
• Round 4: Solutions – Local
• Round 5: Solutions – Personal

The main components of the game are contained in the teacher handouts.

Read the rules prior to starting this game. They are available as the activity outline for the lesson and as a Teacher Handout – Teacher Handout: Climate Challenge Quiz Rules – that can be accessed through the handout section of this lesson.

Once you understand the game you can decide how you will structure the quiz for your particular class needs. You will need to consider your timing – whether you will do it all at one time, or spread the rounds over several classes. You will need to consider how you will be dividing the class into groups so they all get a turn in the different rounds. For Question 6b in Round 5 of the Quiz, you will need to adapt the question and the answer to shows the actual cost of electricity per kWh in your community. You will find the cost on your electricity bill.

Activity:

Pre-lesson Teacher Preparation:

For Question 6b in Round 5 of the Quiz, you will need to adapt the question and the answer to show the actual cost of electricity per kW.h in your community. You will find the cost on your electricity bill.

Read the rules (Teacher Handout: Climate Challenge Quiz Rules), and decide how you will structure the quiz: timing (whether you will do it all at one time, or spread the rounds over several classes), dividing the class into groups to take turns in the different rounds, etc.

Explain the rules to the class.

1. There are five rounds in this game, with 10 or more questions in each round. The quizmaster (generally the teacher) has the correct answers, and should be able to explain them, answer follow-up student questions and lead the discussion. The quizmaster keeps score on the blackboard.
2. Ask two students are asked to act as referees for each round. In the event of a close call, their job is to decide which team called out their answer first. They can also participate in the game.
3. Each round is played by two teams of three members each, who sit in front of the class. Both teams need pens and paper, to make notes. (Each round has six people in two teams, allowing 24 students to participate over the four rounds. If there are less than 24, use whatever means you like to make up the team numbers. If there are more than 24, the teams should be larger.)
4. Have each team choose a name, and a word or noise that they will call out to indicate when they are ready with an answer. The class as a whole can choose how to congratulate the winning team.
   
   
   • Round 1 (Climate Change) has 10 questions, and three bonus questions.
   • Round 2 (Impacts) has 11 questions.
   • Round 3 (Global Solutions) has 16 questions.
   • Round 4 (Local Solutions) has 12 questions.
   • Round 5 (Personal Solutions) has 21 questions.
5. Have every student who is not on a team take a piece of paper, and draw three columns, to track their own score:

   Question	Answer	Points
   Total

   Each time a question is asked, everyone who is not on a team writes their own answer in Column two, and keeps score of their results. At the end of each round, they add up their scores to see who has the highest.

6. Each time a question is asked, the team members discuss it, and agree on their answer. As soon as they are ready, they call out their word or noise. As the Quizmaster, you ask them the question. If they are correct, they win the points associated with the question. If they are wrong, the other team is given 10 seconds to answer the same question.
7. If both teams get the answer wrong, the question goes to the class. The first student who answers the question correctly wins the points for that question. He or she also has a chance to explain why that is the correct answer. If he or she can do this to the satisfaction of the Quizmaster, he or she wins twice the value of the points for that question. After any question, the Quizmaster may ask any student who is not in a team to volunteer to explain why this is the correct answer. A good answer earns 10 bonus points; a middling answer earns five bonus points. A disruptive answer loses five points.
8. As Quizmaster, you may arbitrarily increase the points that can be won for the final three questions to encourage the team that is behind.
9. After each Round, the points are tallied up, and the winning team is announced. The students who are not in a team also add up their points, and the Quizmaster invites anyone to call out a score, to see who has won. The two winning students are invited to head up the next two teams, based on the birthdates of other students closest them. Each student can only join a team once.
10. Play the Climate Challenge Game, in five rounds. Make sure the game becomes a real learning experience, by pausing after each question to explain the answer and/or after each round to discuss the topic.

Handouts:

Click on the icon for the complete set of handouts that support this lesson:

Teacher Handout: Climate Challenge Quiz Rules
Teacher Handout: Round 1: Climate Change Basics
Teacher Handout: Round 2: Impacts
Teacher Handout: Round 3: Solutions – Global
Teacher Handout: Round 4: Solutions – Local
Teacher Handout: Round 5: Solutions – Personal

Student Web-Exchange:

Post some or all of the student reports suggested in the evaluation and enrichment sections of this lesson. Click on the icon for information on how to post material.

Evaluation:

• Ask each student to write down the five most important or most interesting new facts or pieces of information that they learned during the class, and to include these in a short report. One or more of these could be selected to post on the Student Web-Exchange.
• Create a short paper-and-pencil quiz, based on some of the questions discussed in class.

Enrichment Ideas:

Geography, Social Studies, Biology, Science, Environmental Studies

Extend the Challenge: Make this a team challenge between two classes, who prepare for it first through reading the backgrounders, and additional research.

Social Studies, Science, English Language Arts

Expand the Quiz: Invite students – working either individually or in small groups – to create questions (along with the answer and explanation) for another Climate Challenge Quiz, to be used in your class, or for other classes.

Geography, Social Studies, Biology, Science, Environmental Studies

Planning for Change: Invite the students to do one of the following, based on the information that they have gathered from the quiz and elsewhere:

• develop a plan to reduce the school’s greenhouse gas emissions
• design a house that would produce very few greenhouse gas emissions
• design a small community that would produce very few greenhouse gas emissions

About the Author:

Guy Dauncey

I live with my wife and various animals on a small organic plant nursery, just outside Victoria, on Vancouver Island.

I work as an author and consultant in the fields of global climate change, sustainable energy policy, green buildings, and green communities. I am author of the book Stormy Weather: 101 Solutions to Global Climate Change (New Society Publishers, 2001, $27.95), and a frequent public speaker and workshop leader.

In 2001, I helped draft the Whitehorse Declaration on Northern Climate Change at the Circumpolar Climate Change Summit. I have yet to travel north of Whitehorse, but I have been following the impact of global climate change on the Arctic for many years, with growing concern.

My website is http://www.earthfuture.com/