Everyone has an origin story. For one woman, that story begins with the love between a husband and wife. And a petri dish. Lab staff prepare small petri dishes, each holding several 1-7-day-old embryos, at the Aspire Houston Fertility Institute in vitro fertilization...
Amina McCauley experienced climate change in the ancient forests of Tasmania. Now she wants students around the globe to understand its effects. Amina McCauley sits among the fern trees in Wellington Park, Tasmania. (Photo courtesy Amina McCauley) Concern about...
Sri Lanka is trying to do its part to combat climate change. But it will take a sea change to stop the ocean rising around the island nation. Cracks are visible from coastal erosion on sea shore in Iranawila, Sri Lanka, 19 June 2023. (AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena )...
A cyclone can affect trees which impact insects and animals spreading diseases to people. Doctors are realizing that individual health is part of an ecosystem. A bat, a flowering tree and a horse against the backdrop of a tornado. (Illustration by News Decoder) This...
How is having a C-section connected to deforestation? How can a cyclone off the coast of Australia affect the population of fruit bats and horse trainers? Health and science correspondent Maggie Fox dissects the concept of One Health for students in this latest Classroom #Decoder. In the accompanying classroom activity, get students thinking about their own thinking in an exercise in metacognition.
Exercise: With this article, students will engage in The 4 C’s protocol, adapted from Project Zero of the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Students will read the article then answer the 4 C’s. (1) What connections do students draw between the text and their own lives? (2) What ideas or assumptions in the text do they want to challenge or learn more about? (3) What is the text’s key concept or takeaway? (4) How did the text change the way students thought about the topic? Did the text inspire a change in attitude or action? Have students underline or annotate the text in response to each question. Share responses in small groups, then as a larger class.
There are active volcanoes across the globe. When they erupt people can die and whole communities vanish. Scientists of the University of Iceland take measurements and samples standing on the ridge in front of the active part of the eruptive fissure of an active...
Living near an active volcano can be scary. Even scarier is living near an active volcano without an adequate emergency plan in place. With extreme weather events and natural disasters on the rise in recent years, help your students develop an emergency preparedness plan for their community in this piece from correspondent Tira Shubart.
Exercise: Read the article as a class and discuss why emergency preparedness plans are not equitable around the world. Then, evaluate your school and community’s level of emergency preparedness. What makes for an effective plan? Are there any weaknesses to your community’s existing emergency preparedness efforts? What could be improved?
The Javan slow loris is incredibly cute and critically endangered. They are easy to hunt and sell on the illegal market. Rehabilitating them takes more effort. A Javan slow loris before its release in a cage habituation enclosure at Gunung Halimun Salak National Park...
News Decoder again partners with the Climate Academy to help students tell climate change stories and teachers to incorporate climate change into their classes. A globe in a classroom. (Photo by vitranc for Getty Images) Climate change may be the existential crisis of...
The little space copter that could finally puttered out. But our hopes for stepping on Martian soil? That keeps chugging along. An illustration of NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter stands on the Red Planet’s surface. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)...
A heat pump isn’t nearly as sexy as an electric BMW or a floating wind turbine. But on an individual level, it might make a big difference. Flowers grow next to a heat pump installed at a residential house. (Photo by one pony/Getty Images) This article was...
We turn to technology to solve our problems but most of it is designed by men. One woman believes girls can program their own solutions. Girls sit in front of computers as they learn to code. (Photo illustration by News Decoder) This article, by high school student...