Download Writing and Thinking about Global Warming

Why Should We Care? Writing and Thinking About
Global Warming
Project Overview
College Writing students will visit several websites that gather and track real-time, nearreal-time, and historical climate and natural data around the world in order to gain
information regarding some aspect of climate change (in the atmosphere, biosphere,
hydrosphere, etc). Some data appears in the form of graphs, and some of it appears as
images (of ice coverage in the Arctic, for example). Students will then read and respond
to a climate weblog. In addition to discovering some of the widely varied resources on
the internet and learning how to use that information, they will also become familiar with
reading/responding to weblogs. This RWLO will help them develop their thinking for an
essay assignment based on An Inconvenient Truth.
(Note: The essay asks them to take a position regarding global warming, explaining
whether this issue should be a priority in their lives and communities, or not, and why.
Additional websites—tracking the development and migration of insect-borne disease,
and hunger, for example—could be used accessed to expand research, if that were an
appropriate goal for the class.)
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Student Learning Objectives
For this RWLO, the student will be able to:

Visit websites with up-to-the-minute collected news articles, as well as
real-time, near real-time, and archived data

Briefly describe one graph with real-time or near-real time data

Briefly summarize one recent news article

Submit at least one entry on a climate blog
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Procedure
Time: Approximately 50 minutes in lab
Materials: Computers with internet access
Prerequisites: Ability to type and use the internet
Implementation: This RWLO is best assigned after the first half of the semester,
when students will be familiar enough with the technology to be able to work
independently. This assignment can be used either in the College Writing lab
classroom, or as homework.
Steps:
1. In class, hand out assignment and discuss instructions with students
2. If there is internet access and a projection system, visit the two primary
websites (www.climateark.org/news and www.exploratorium.edu/climate
work well as examples of two different kinds of resources) to demonstrate
how to locate articles and data sources. Then visit the weblog at
www.climateark.org/blog to demonstrate how to find and make entries.
3. Remind students to take their time and indulge their curiosity exploring
various parts of these sites before writing their descriptions, summaries,
and blog entries.
4. Remind students their assignment is not complete until they have received
an email back from their instructor.
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Content Material
Student Directions:
 Go to the website www.exploratorium.edu/climate.

After reading the first page, choose a tab (atmosphere, hydrosphere,
cryosphere, biosphere) that most interests you and click on it.
(Alternately, click on each tab, scan through to see what you find
most interesting.)

Explore, paying particular attention to graphs that are identified as
“near real time data” or short-term data.

Write a brief description of the graph or information that most caught
your attention. Include the title of the graph and the link to it. What
information was the graph conveying? What was most compelling, or
surprising or interesting about it?

Go to the website www.climateark.org.

Click on the left column, “Climate News,“ a continuously updated
news service. Find an article on a topic of interest for you (political—
local, national, global—scientific, social, and so on), and read it.

Write a brief summary of that article, following the format below:

identify the author(s) and title of the work.

write an introductory statement that summarizes the main point of the entire
piece

provide the reader with a general understanding of the author’s main idea and
significant supporting points

Remember: you are explaining the ideas of the author in the reading being
summarized—summaries should never include your own thoughts or feelings
about the reading

Go to www.climateark.org/blog. Read several entries, as well as
reader responses. Write a civil, substantive response (that is, NOT a
summary, NOT a “Yeah, me too” but something thoughtful that you
think or feel about what you’ve read) and post it on the blog.

Send an email to your instructor with both summaries included (either
as attachments or copied and pasted into the text of the email), as
well as a link to your blog comment.

Check email to see that instructor has replied (and received all
required materials).
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Referenced URLs:

The Exploratorium Global Climate Change Research Explorer
www.exploratorium.edu/climate

The Climate Change and Global Warming Portal: including a continuous
news scanning service and climate blog. www.climateark.org
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Assessment
Evaluation Rubric:
Needs Revision
Adequate Excellent
Graph Description (must include title,
link, description)
News Summary (must include
publication date, news source, author,
title, main idea, supporting points)
Blog entry (must be relevant,
substantive and civil)
Email to instructor
Needs Revision: missing one or more components in description above
Adequate: meets minimal requirements listed above
Excellent: in addition to meeting all minimal requirements, student work is
attractively presented using MLA formatting.
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Links to Course Competencies
This RWLO could be applied in the following courses: LN090, WR100, EN101,
and others. Specifically, this RWLO meets the following course (and college)
competencies:

critical thinking and reading

composing academic writing (summary, description)

research

understanding the interdependence of the countries/cultures of the
world (graduation competency)
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Supplementary Resources

Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth” Movie: Fact or Hype?
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/05/060524-globalwarming.html

NOAA Realtime and Retrospective Arctic data
http://asl.arctic.noaa.gov/data.htm

World View of Global Warming: Global warming at the extremes of
the earth: habitats and cultures everywhere react to climate’s rapid
changes. http://www.worldviewofglobalwarming.org/pages/risingseas.html

Global Warming Program/Union of Concerned Scientists
www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/
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Recommendations
Recommendations for Integration: This RWLO works well as a crossdisciplinary module for use in a writing classroom. It was also designed to
accompany our college’s OneBook project this semester, focused on An
Inconvenient Truth, which instructors in many disciplines are using in their
courses.
Back-up: If internet access is down, it would be possible to print out and copy
student instructions, and to choose an article (to the instructor’s taste!) in
advance from www.climateark.org/news, then asking students to summarize that
article in class. If there are no computers in class, all of the above would still
work; they would simply need to hand-write the summary. The graph description
and weblog entry section would need to be completed as homework, since they
require a computer with a live internet connection.
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