Key Learning:

After this week’s lecture and workshops on climate change I have learned about:

• What climate change is, that climate is the average weather at a given point and time of year, over a long period (typically 30 years). We expect the weather to change a lot from day to day, but we expect the climate to remain relatively constant.
• Evidence of climate change is collected by: weather recordings , ice cores , rocks and fossils and analysis of pollen and trees.
• The impacts of climate change
• The Greenhouse effect
• Global Warming and weather
• Politics and Global Warming

Impact on my views/lifestyle/practice:

Prior to this week’s input on Climate change I did not have a great deal of knowledge on the topic however after both lecture and workshops from Louise and Andrew, I now feel that I have expanded my knowledge and can see the benefits of teaching children the impacts of climate change.  Also before the inputs I believe that I had been quite ignorant to climate change and the effects it has on our planet.

I found the practical workshop with Andrew to be most effective as it allowed us to carry out a few different experiments with regards to climate change such as making a cloud in a jar and the weather front experiment. Both experiments were very easy to carry out, engaging and would be perfect in a classroom.

Furthermore, after calculating my carbon footprint – which was larger than expected – I have taken into account my own personal effects on our planet and have become more aware on how to reduce my carbon footprint.

Areas of interest to explore further/develop:

• I found that using the WWF website to calculate my carbon footprint effective and I believe that using it with children would be easy and also effective as it illustrates the areas which impact our carbon footprint such as food, home and travel.
• Explore further reading and research regarding this theme.