This activity is for middle school students. The activity is used by teachers who exclusively teach science, as well as those who teach all subjects.

Should have an understanding of conduction and convection, but prior knowledge is assumed to be low.

This activity stands as a third unit middle school students use to learn about energy.

Solar radiation and energy transformation
Carbon Cycle and cumulative impact of human contributions
Mechanisms for greenhouse effect as a natural process

Students predict and evaluate ideas, interpret and synthesize across models

Students develop writing skills and representational skills, they work in dyads.

Understanding global climate change is challenging, even for adults, yet having an understanding of this topic is consequential for the future. In this activity, middle school students learn about global climate change using models that allow them to make predictions, observations, and then explain mechanisms for climate change. Component ideas include change over time, deep time, and accumulation. Students are asked to act as advisers on how to lower energy use, and refine their understanding of how and why this is important, before testing their ideas and finally revising their advice.

Assessments are embedded throughout the activity, and as pre/post measures ("Initial ideas" and "Reflecting" activities). These are coded using the knowledge integration framework. When teachers grade these, they sometimes adapt the knowledge integration framework, or apply their own scheme (see Linn, 2006).

https://dixieching.wordpress.com/2010/08/29/the-knowledge-integration-perspective-on-learning-linn-eylon-davis-2004/

Linn, M. C. (2006). The knowledge integration perspective on learning and instruction. In K. Sawyer (Ed.), The Cambridge handbook of the learning sciences (pp. 243-264). New York: Cambridge University Press.