I used the “Healing the Ozone Layer” video as a primer during a unit on Ecology and the Climate with my 9th-grade Accelerated Biology class. I can see these resources working well as an Earth Day activity. The topic will surprise your students and deepen their understanding of the Ozone layer and how an international treaty tackling a climate issue has been successful in the past.
At the start of the unit, we did a K-W-L chart to gather information on what the students knew about climate and what things came to mind when they heard that word. Several students brought up the ozone layer, but when I probed them with additional questions, they did not have a firm understanding of what it was; they had a notion of it being “fixed,” but did not know what that meant.
Students watched the video and filled in the timeline table in the Retro Report student activity. They also responded to the Do Now question, which had them compare and contrast the story of the ozone layer to the current climate crisis. When we debriefed about the video, students were very shocked that the interior secretary under Ronald Reagan suggested that people should wear hats and sunglasses. They also revealed that they had never heard about the Montreal Protocol in their history classes.
Students were also really interested in the weather balloons shown in the video. They knew they existed but did not understand how or why they worked. Consider building in time to confront some of the questions students have. Too often, we assume students understand something if they know a term, but if you dig deeper, you realize the depth of understanding is not there. In the future, I plan to build in more time to have the important conversations this activity sparked.
By incorporating this Retro Report video in Biology, the students and I were able to bust through many misconceptions. If you teach Biology, Chemistry, or Environmental Science, I highly recommend incorporating the video into your class.
JACQUELINE KATZ is a biology and chemistry teacher at Princeton High School in Princeton, N.J., and a member of Retro Report’s Council of Educators. She created lessons and student activities for Reintroducing Wolves to Yellowstone and Can Plant-Based Meat Mitigate Climate Change?
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