With support from NASA, and in collaboration with the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) and schools and teachers throughout Illinois, the Chicago Botanic Garden has developed the Climate Change in My Backyard curriculum series. The project targets grades 5 to 12.
"The reason we developed this curriculum is because there were few or no regionally relevant climate-change curricula out there," said Jennifer Schwarz Ballard, Ph.D., associate vice president of education for the Garden. Lesson plans and activity support materials on this page are free to all.
The series is made of three complete curricula, targeting different age levels—grades 5 to 6, grades 7 to 9, and grades 10 to 12. Each curriculum comprises four units that address critical aspects of a systems approach to understanding climate and its impacts on humans and the environment:
NASA Climate Change Curriculum
Grades 10-12
Grades 7-9
Grades 5-6
