HEART Force - Adapting to Extremes: Exploring the Science of Wildfire in Colorado

Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado Boulder

In this lesson, students analyze and synthesize data, and design local wildfire preparation strategies to answer the question "What can we learn from past wildfires to prepare for future wildfires?"

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Notes from our reviewers

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Teacher should familiarize themselves with data, videos, and other resources that students will be reviewing and interpreting ahead of time (particularly NOAA data in jigsaw station 3 and arcGIS map in activity 4). This lesson connects to a wildfire game listed on the lesson website. This lesson could be facilitated in a virtual setting. Student handouts, teacher slides, and a plethora of additional resources are provided for the teacher to use. Lots of background information and resources are provided. Prep time on the teacher's part should be minimal. Teachers may need to review introduction slides (videos) before presenting to the class, as students may have personal experiences with this disaster.
This lesson focuses on the causes, timing, and severity of historic wildfires and areas vulnerable to wildfire in students' communities. Students synthesize information from local hazard mitigation plans, NOAA, Colorado State Forest Service, the National Wildfire Protection Association, the National Climate Assessment, US Climate Resilience Toolkit, and GIS data to build understanding about the causes, timing, and severity of historic wildfires and areas vulnerable to wildfire in their community. They then design possible risk mitigation strategies for their communities. Resource developed in collaboration with expert scientists - no CLEAN expert science review was needed.
The lesson follows the 5E learning model, and encourages students to develop their own understandings from the scientific data that they analyze. Students share and synthesize information from multiple sources (e.g., news clips, expert interviews, text, maps) through a jigsaw activity. The lesson culminates in a writing activity in which students design and present their local wildfire risk mitigation strategies in a letter to the editor. Both the teacher guide and student handouts are organized clearly and link to external resources, making it easy for the teacher and students to navigation the lesson. Teacher slides, materials lists, standards alignment, learning goals, key vocabulary, and suggestions for bringing experts into the classroom are all provided. Teachers may need to offer support in determining the big idea from the jigsaw activity.