Copenhagen conference in your classroom

andrew — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 12:29:53 +0000

This month 192 countries are gathering in Copenhagen to negotiate a new agreement on climate change. The Copenhagen conference provides the perfect backdrop to engage your students with this incredibly important issue, and as the world’s leaders sit down to hammer out a new deal, why not get your students to do the same?

Get your students to do some independent research into climate change and then try our fab Marketplace discussion technique. Students can be assigned to one of 6 perspectives and can adopt the persona of an economist, a climate scientist, a climate modeller, a human rights activist, a UN politician or a UK politician, and asked to present their perspective to the rest of their group. It’s a great way to capture the many different sides to this complex topic.

: Desert landscape

The marketplace technique is a great way of using small group discussion to disseminate a large amount of information to the whole class. Making students ‘experts’ on one particular area of a topic means that they all have relevant information to contribute to the discussion.

Talk Science » copenhagen

Copenhagen conference in your classroom