Amy Bivin
Italy
This week the students learned the difference between climate and weather. We watched several videos from WWF and National Geographic. Then they explored climate change. They came up with their own definition: Climate Change is the change in the usual weather. It's caused by humans and is warming our earth globally. They decided to collaborate to make a change and solve the problem.
After reviewing the causes of Climate Change we talked about the effects. We made a list: Desertification, Oceans Rising, Ice Caps Melting, Endangered Animals, Air Temperatures Rising, Air Quality Decreases, Displaced Habitats, Coral Reefs Bleaching/Dying, More Extreme Weather/Fires, Coastal Erosion, Glaciers Melting and Disease. Due to COVID we could not work in groups but each student created a poster for the various effects of climate change.
Italy is a peninsula so we are mostly affected by: Glaciers melting in the Alps so the seas levels are rising which causes coastal erosion. The rising temperatures cause droughts and fires and increased rainfall causes floods.
This week we looked beyond Italy and explored the effects of Climate Change around the world. Italy has more of problem with coastal erosion but many other places have problems with more extreme weather like hurricanes and tornados in the USA and tsunamis in southeast Asia. This year there were so many serious fires like in Australia, California and the Amazon. Also in some places in Asia sometimes schools are closed because of pollution. One common global factor is the Coronavirus. My students watched a video message from Jane Goodall, where she indicated COVID is partly caused by animal displacement from climate change. This is definitely a global effect!!