Researching Climate Change LESSON PLAN

The document is a pedagogical resource designed to teach the Ojibwe language using a video about climate change and its effects on boreal lakes. It includes a full English-Ojibwe transcript, a detailed sentence-by-sentence grammatical breakdown, a glossary of terms, and a lesson planning form for educators. The content focuses on scientific concepts such as the impact of decreased precipitation on lake color and the resulting habitat loss for lake trout, while providing the linguistic tools to express these concepts in Anishinaabemowin.

• The IISD Experimental Lakes Area (IISD-ELA) consists of 58 lakes in Northwestern Ontario, Canada, used as a real-world laboratory to study human impacts on freshwater ecosystems.
• Climate change is driven by deforestation, large-scale agriculture, and the burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas), which release carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
• In boreal lakes, climate change is predicted to decrease precipitation, which reduces the amount of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and makes the water lighter in colour, allowing sunlight to penetrate deeper and warm the lakes further.
• Warming lake waters negatively impact lake trout by forcing them deeper into the lake where oxygen levels are too low, leading to reduced energy for growth and reproduction and a decrease in average fish size.
• Global efforts to mitigate climate change include the use of renewable energy like solar and wind, sustainable transportation (walking, cycling, public transit), and the 2015 Paris Agreement, which aims to limit global temperature rise to less than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
• The translation process for the lesson plan involved three full-day sessions with Ojibwe language experts and Elders, incorporating traditional knowledge and scientific concepts through a sentence-by-sentence interpretation of the English transcript.

APA

International Institute for Sustainable Development (2021). Researching Climate Change LESSON PLAN. https://www.iisd.org/system/files/2021-08/lesson-plan-ojibwe-researching-climate-change.pdf

Chicago

International Institute for Sustainable Development. Researching Climate Change LESSON PLAN. 2021. https://www.iisd.org/system/files/2021-08/lesson-plan-ojibwe-researching-climate-change.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=International Institute for Sustainable Development |title=Researching Climate Change LESSON PLAN |date=June 2021 |url=https://www.iisd.org/system/files/2021-08/lesson-plan-ojibwe-researching-climate-change.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{internationalinstituteforsustainabledevelopment2021researching, author = {{International Institute for Sustainable Development}}, title = {{Researching Climate Change LESSON PLAN}}, institution = {International Institute for Sustainable Development}, year = {2021}, month = jun, url = {https://www.iisd.org/system/files/2021-08/lesson-plan-ojibwe-researching-climate-change.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }