Climate kNOWledge: Student research and action to reduce

the impacts of the climate change emergency  

Thanks to funding from NOAA B-Wet, we have developed a district-wide climate change curriculum with a meaningful watershed educational experience. Now, every sixth-grade student and teacher in the Howard County Public School System will engage in robust hands-on climate science and climate justice lessons in and out of the classroom, the first program of its kind in the region.

First of its kind curriculum

Students in every sixth-grade classroom in Howard County Public Schools will engage in climate science and climate justice learning through a twelve-lesson sequence that is now part of the system-wide annual science curriculum. Students examine local case studies of climate impacts, investigate solutions in their own neighborhoods and engage in action projects.

Climate Xpedition to the Conservancy

Every sixth-grader in Howard County Public Schools will visit the Conservancy’s Mt. Pleasant location each spring to engage in a Climate Solutions field trip with their school. Students hike our trails to explore local climate solutions and participate in two hands-on stations in which they learn about and discuss climate justice and the carbon footprint of food.

Solutions with collective learning

Sixth-grade students are invited to participate in a weekend fall enrichment program hosted by the Howard County Conservancy. The Climate Change Solutionists meet four autumn Sundays with Conservancy mentors and a team of high school climate change ambassadors from the Youth Climate Institute. Solutionists work to build a better understanding of climate change science and prepare to implement action projects at their schools.

Students take action locally

Student action projects are embedded into the Climate kNOWledge curriculum. Students take inspiration from what they learn in the unit to design and implement an action project addressing a local climate change problem. Each year one middle school is selected to conduct a tree planting on site, in partnership with Howard County Department of Recreation and Parks and Live Green Howard. All student action projects and associated in-class instruction meet the student service learning requirements for sixth grade.