Science Partnership for Global Change Education
Movie and Book Club Ideas
The books and movies listed here have been selected to help you in your classroom. They specifically address teaching climate change in grades K-12. The descriptions of the titles are adapted from promotional copy provided by their publishers. If you have suggestions for other good books or movies on the topic, please let us know in the Teacher Feedback section of this website.
This book offers innovative approaches to teaching about climate change through storytelling forms that appeal to today’s students: climate fiction and protest poetry, fiction and documentary films, video games, and social media. Contributors from around the world encourage educators to offer comprehensive K–12 climate education by aligning pedagogy with real-world challenges
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Climate Change Education: Reimagining the Future with Alternative Forms of Storytelling, edited by Rebecca Young
This book provides a framework for putting climate change at the forefront of educational agendas and offers pedagogical tools for teaching climate science across local and global settings. It makes the case that students need to understand climate science and the physical and social impacts of climate change not only to be good citizens but also to be well-prepared for different career paths.
Climate Change Education explores what education for climate change entails, discussing the concept of climate change education (CCE) itself, how it is taught in schools, and how public education is being carried out. Updated with the latest literature in a quickly advancing field, the book defines CCE for the global citizen and reviews supporting pedagogies.
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Teaching Climate Change lays out a comprehensive approach to K–12 climate change education that builds in-depth knowledge, empowers students, and promotes a social justice mindset. The author presents real-life classroom examples illustrating key STEM concepts such as carbon cycles and the greenhouse effect. Broader issues, including the countering of misinformation, and the advancement of justice are also addressed.
Exploring the ways children can learn from the weather, this book is written for advanced students. It works with the pedagogical potential in children’s relations with weather as a vital way of connecting with and responding to wider climate concerns.
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This timely book provides an overview of climate change and highlights the importance of including climate change education in primary schools. It emphasizes cross-curricular pedagogical approaches and focuses on climate justice, providing in-depth assistance for teaching children aged 3–13 years. Accompanied by online resources, the book includes practical and easy-to-follow ideas and lesson plans that will help teachers include climate change in their classrooms in a holistic, cross-curricular manner.
This timely and insightful book assists secondary science teachers in developing effective curricula ready to meet the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). Experienced science educator and leader Dr. Kelley T. Le provides an overview of the teaching shifts needed for NGSS and climate change literacy. Teachers will also learn how to engage the complexity of climate change by exploring social, racial, and environmental injustices that directly impact students
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This book highlights best practices in climate change education by analyzing a rich collection of case studies that showcase educational programs across the United States. These range from traditional institutions such as K-12 schools and universities to the contemporary learning environments of museums and environmental education centers.
This book has become a seminal text on climate solutions, drawing on humanity’s collective wisdom about the practices and technologies that can begin to reverse the buildup of atmospheric carbon by mid-century. The material contained within the pages of Drawdown has influenced university curricula, city climate plans, commitments by businesses, community action, philanthropic strategy, and more.
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Merchants of Doubt – Oreskes and Conway
The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable – Ghosh
The Madhouse Effect – Mann and Toles
Dire Predictions – Mann and Kump
The Ice at the End of the World – Jon Gertner
The End of Ice- Jamail
The Uninhabitable Earth – Life After Warming – David Wallace Wells
Field Notes from a Catastrophe - Elizabeth Kolbert
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Chasing Ice is the story of one man’s mission to change the tide of history by gathering undeniable evidence of our changing planet. Within months of that first trip to Iceland, the photographer James Balog conceived the boldest expedition of his life: The Extreme Ice Survey. With a band of young adventurers in tow, Balog began deploying revolutionary time-lapse cameras across the brutal Arctic to capture a multi-year record of the world’s changing glaciers. It takes years for Balog to see the fruits of his labor. His hauntingly beautiful videos compress years into seconds and capture ancient mountains of ice in motion as they disappear at a breathtaking rate.
School screenings can be arranged at:
https://chasingice.com/for-schools/
A revolutionary group of activists, scientists, farmers, and politicians band together in a global movement of "Regenerative Agriculture" that could balance our climate, replenish our vast water supplies, and feed the world.
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A team of divers, photographers and scientists set out on a thrilling ocean adventure to discover why corals are vanishing at an unprecedented rate.
This film is the product of 500+ hours of underwater footage, coral bleaching submissions from volunteers in 30 countries, and support from more than 500 people in various locations around the world.
School screenings can be arranged at:
https://www.chasingcoral.com/for-schools/
Before the Flood is a 2016 documentary film about climate change directed by Fisher Stevens. The film was produced as a collaboration between Stevens, Leonardo DiCaprio, James Packer, Brett Ratner, Trevor Davidoski, and Jennifer Davisson Killoran. Martin Scorsese is an executive producer.[3]
The film covers the effects of climate change in various regions of the world and discusses climate change denial. Numerous public figures are interviewed in the documentary. To offset the carbon emissions of the production, the filmmakers paid a voluntary carbon tax.
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Eating our Way to Extinction takes audiences on a cinematic journey around the world, from the depths of the Amazon rainforests to the Taiwanese Mountains, the Mongolian desert, the US Dust Bowl, the Norwegian Fjords and the Scottish coastlines, telling the story of our planet through shocking testimonials, poignant accounts from indigenous people most affected by our ever-changing planet, globally renowned figures and leading scientists. This powerful documentary sends a simple but impactful message by uncovering hard truths and addressing, on the big screen, the most pressing issue of our generation – ecological collapse.