Workshop Description

As Al Gore states in his book, An Inconvenient Truth, “the Chinese expression for ‘crisis’ consists of two characters side by side…The first is the symbol for ‘danger,’ the second the symbol for ‘opportunity’.” Looking at the inconvenient truth of global warming, we hope to empower teachers and students to allow inconvenient truths into the classroom through reading, writing and research.  This workshop will use selected readings from the book to examine how Gore’s personal relationship to the material guided his inquiry, as well as how to use research in writing.  Using the principles of permission and attention, from the Story Workshop Approach to the Teaching of Writing®, and teambuilding games, we will use the text to inspire our own questions, hypotheses, and discoveries of other inconvenient truths in orally told stories.  Finally, we will write our own text based on these stories.  We hope this workshop will motivate teachers to use An Inconvenient Truth in their classrooms, and open the door to further inquiries led by their students’ needs and interests. (6th grade and up)

Unit Template

Lesson Plan

Week One

Week Two

Week Three

Week Four

Booklist

Inconvenient Argument

Using the Book Itself

Web Resources

Naturalist Intelligence Lesson Ideas

Poster - Gardner - I Want My Children

Poster - Lesson from the Geese

Poster - Moral Capacity

Poster - Moral Imaginations

Poster - Naturalist Intelligence Definition

Poster - Nature Smart Kids

Poster - Opportunity to Rise

Poster - Research

Workshop Description