Authentic Performance Activities facilitate a student’s understanding of a lesson’s usefulness in real life. They are also an Understanding by Design (UbD) assessment tool. Focus questions act as pre- and post-assessment indicators of the activity’s effectiveness.
Focus Questions:
1. Why do we learn about climate?
2. Can you think of any other jobs where knowing about the climate and how it affects humans might be helpful?
3. Can you think of any ways where knowing about climate could affect your home and property (the way you heat and cool your house and the landscaping you plant)?
Authentic Performance
You are an ecologist who specializes in surveying ecosystems to assess their health and viability. A huge volcanic eruption releases a layer of thick, black dust into the atmosphere blocking out sunlight.
Climatologists worry that it might block sunlight from reaching the Earth for a full year. As an ecologist, it is your job to predict what will happen if the Earth cannot receive sunlight for a full year. Name three effects you might expect to see happening to the planet over that amount of time with no sunlight.
