Information for Teachers 

Solutions and further information:

Find further material and solutions in the ACCENT material corner for this edition.

What are pupils expected to learn?

The content of this online magazine can be integrated in the context of studying the forest as our environment, biomass formation and the process of photosynthesis in plants.

• Students will understand that the growth of plants changes the carbon dioxide content in the air.
• Students will learn that nature as atmospheric CO₂ composition have a seasonal variability, related to assimilation and dissimiliation.
• Students will see that scientific monitoring or air composition is subject to uncertainties and potential mistakes.
• Students will think over the distribution of forests and human settlements on our planet and the consequence for the carbon dioxide pattern on both hemispheres.
• Students shall learn to draw and interprete a graph from available scientific data.

Suggestion for further work:

You will find CO₂ data for different time ranges and with different resolution for four measurement stations in the Material corner (pure text and Excel format).

• Ask the students to find out the average value of monthly measurements from one year.
• Which month is closest to this average (northern hemisphere)?
• Ask the students to draw a long time graph of the values of this month on scale paper for the Barrow station.
• Ask the students to extrapolate this graph for the next 30 years and to estimate the average annual increase of the CO₂ mixing ratio.
• Ask the students to draw the monthly values of 24 months available for all stations into one diagram and discuss the differences.

Curricular context

The content of the ACCENT online material can for example be integrated as application in classes in the context of plant metabolism in biology lessons. Depending on how much of the material is used, an integration is possible in 1 - 2 lessons.

Metabolism, photosynthesis and respriration (assimilation and dissimilation) should be essential key contents in any curriculum and the forest is a typical example in this context. However, with respect to the fact that 71% of the Earth is covered by oceans, also phytoplankton life-cycles in the ocean could be considered as additional content of teaching.

Here the following ESPERE material may be supportive:

Oceans - Basics - Unit 2: Phytoplancton and nutrients in the ocean