CHALLENGE

SDGs in the Classroom

In 2015, the United Nations created the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Agenda—a set of 17 goals focused on addressing global concerns such as climate change, global poverty, pollution, inequality, and many more. As we embark on the halfway point of the SDG Agenda, we aim to find new ways to engage youth with the tools available to advance these goals and measure our progress in achieving them. Your challenge is to develop a lesson plan that educates high school students about an SDG, and can be integrated into a science unit that may already be part of the curriculum (e.g., a unit on weather, geology, soil health, etc.).

Background

In 2015, the United Nations created the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Agenda—a set of 17 goals focused on addressing global concerns such as climate change, global poverty, pollution, inequality, and many more. Several organizations such as Earth Observations for the SDGs, or EO4SDG, have aimed to promote use of Earth observation data to both advance the SDGs and track their general progress. As we approach the halfway point of the SDG Agenda, this is a unique time to equip communities with the tools to engage in these processes. One way to accomplish this aim is to engage and empower youth to understand not only the SDGs themselves, but how we can use Earth observations, remote sensing, and science to improve the lives of people in their communities.

Objectives

Your challenge is to develop a lesson plan that educates high school students about an SDG, and can be integrated into a science unit that may already be part of the curriculum (e.g., a unit on weather, geology, soil health, etc.). The goal of this challenge is to develop new and exciting methods to educate students about the SDGs in ways that organically align with classroom topics. It is important to incorporate material in the lesson to describe the tools that can help realize the SDG and measure progress made. How can you help educators incorporate these essential goals and concepts into classrooms to develop future leaders who are informed about these global concerns? What might be the best technique to present this information to this audience, engage them, and motivate them to learn? Will you create a video that explains a certain topic through the lens of an SDG, an interactive game focusing on an SDG, an online tool, a website, or something else? Don’t forget to incorporate at least one NASA data source in your project to emphasize the power of Earth observations and remote sensing to fulfill the SDGs. Your project could potentially be shared with educators and EO4SDG partners on the EO4SDG website, at a webinar event, etc.

Potential Considerations

You may (but are not required to) consider the following:

• If you are a current high school student, you may want to consider what classroom unit you think would blend well with an SDG and how someone could go about teaching this material in an interactive and engaging way.
• If you have graduated high school, it may be worth considering what SDG you have the most passion for/knowledge about and focusing your project on that topic.
• Rather than developing a lesson plan solely focused on an SDG, consider how to integrate the information about the SDG into a topic that could be in an existing high school science curriculum.
• Often hands-on activities are an effective way to engage, educate, and motivate this target age group.