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Sinking island

  • Key Stage 3
  • Topical

Type: Activity
Learning Strategy: Case study
Topic: Atmosphere & climate change

The Pacific island nation of Kiribati recently announced its purchase of land in mountainous Fiji for its population to move to when sea level rises make life on its own low-lying islands impossible. In this activity students use data to predict sea level rises, including uncertainties, and decide whether humans are to blame for climate change. If humans are to blame, then should the biggest polluters pay for land for vulnerable islanders to escape to?

The Sinking island comes from ENGAGE, the EU-wide project from the upd8 team.
Visit the ENGAGE website to download the materials.

Published: 5th November 2014
Reviews & Comments: 0

Learning objectives

In this lesson students will:
Apply knowledge about climate change to explain rising sea levels
Make a prediction about rising sea levels and estimate the uncertainty in their prediction
Evaluate evidence to decide whether humans are to blame for climate change

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England National Curriculum KS3:
Working Scientifically: Analysis and evaluation – evaluate data showing awareness of potential sources of random and systematic error.
Chemistry: Earth and atmosphere – the production of carbon dioxide by human activity and the impact on climate.

GCSE Combined Science subject content:
Working Scientifically: Analysis and evaluation – representing distributions of results and make estimations of uncertainty.
Chemistry: Earth and atmospheric science – carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas.

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