HES Lesson 4 Lesson Goals

Target Student Performance

Activity

Target Performance


Lesson 4 – Fossil Fuels and Carbon Pools (students as questioners, investigators, and explainers)

Activity 4.1: Questions for this Lesson (30 min)

Students apply the large-scale Four Questions to two patterns in the Keeling curve (showing atmospheric CO2 concentrations): the annual cycle and the long-term trend.

Activity 4.2: Carbon Pools and Fossil Fuels (35 min)

Students identify carbon pools in Earth systems and investigate the fluxes associated with human use of one pool: fossil fuels.

Activity 4.3: Tiny World Modeling (50 min)

Students investigate the relationship between pools and fluxes in a physical model of a tiny world, showing how changing photosynthesis, cellular respiration, and combustion fluxes can account for both an annual cycle and a long-term trend in the atmospheric CO2 pool.

Activity 4.4: Global Computer Model (50 min)

Students use an online computer model to make quantitative predictions of how changes in photosynthesis, cellular respiration, and combustion fluxes will affect the long-term trend in the atmospheric CO2 pool.

Optional Activity 4.5: Effects of Seasons and Oceans (50 min)

Students use a diagrammatic carbon cycle model to investigate how oceans and seasons in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres affect the annual cycle and a long-term trend in the atmospheric CO2 pool

NGSS Performance Expectations

High School

  • Ecosystems: Interactions, Energy, and Dynamics. HS-LS2-5. Develop a model to illustrate the role of photosynthesis and cellular respiration in the cycling of carbon among the biosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere, and geosphere.
  • Earth’s Systems. HS-ESS2-2. Analyze geoscience data to make the claim that one change to Earth’s surface can create feedbacks that cause changes to other Earth systems.
  • Weather and Climate. HS-ESS2-4. Use a model to describe how variations in the flow of energy into and out of Earth’s systems result in changes in climate.
  • Earth and Human Activity. HS-ESS3-5. Analyze geoscience data and the results from global climate models to make an evidence-based forecast of the current rate of global or regional climate change and associated future impacts to Earth systems.
  • Earth and Human Activity. HS-ESS3-6. Use a computational representation to illustrate the relationships among Earth systems and how those relationships are being modified due to human activity.

Middle School

  • Waves and Electronic Radiation. MS-PS4-2. Develop and use a model to describe that waves are reflected, absorbed, or transmitted through various materials.
  • MS-ESS2-1. Develop a model to describe the cycling of the Earth’s materials and the flow of energy that drives this process.
  • Human Impacts. MS-ESS3-4. Construct an argument supported by evidence for how increases in human population and per-capital consumption of natural resources impact Earth's systems.
  • Earth and Human Activity. MS-ESS3-5. Ask questions to clarify evidence of the factors that have caused the rise in global temperatures over the past century.