Introduction

This is the first publication in our series called What Goes Around Comes Around. The second publication covers the topic of the water cycle and the third, nitrogen cycle.

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What goes around, goes around, goes around; Comes all the way back around.
                                    —Justin Timberlake

The lyrics, like typical representations of nature’s cycles, oversimplify rather complex relationships. Elementary students often successfully memorize and repeat back the stages in cycles, with no deep conceptual understanding of the complexities of the processes involved. Their ability to synthesize knowledge of the cycles with a wider breadth of information related to real-world, unresolved environmental issues such as global warming, greenhouse gas emissions or the burning of biomass for fuel is probably less well developed.

Here we assume students are familiar with the carbon cycle, but their knowledge of carbon and carbon compound properties is assumed to be limited. Thus, we start with what students already know of the the carbon cycle sequence, back up from there to study the carbon atom and carbon compound properties, and then jump forward to carbon-related environmental issues that render the cycle not so picture perfectly cyclical after all.

In order to be fully prepared to engage in meaningful discussions of carbon-related environmental issues, students also need an understanding of the changing nature of the earth’s atmosphere. The relative proportion of nitrogen, carbon dioxide, oxygen, ozone and other gases is neither consistent around the world nor constant over time. What factors contribute to the variability in atmospheric content? Which of those factors are naturally occurring and which are augmented by human activity? Which of the factors should be controlled? What are the possible approaches to controlling them? Which are most feasible? What are the possible and probable outcomes of such controlling measures?

Resources provided in this publication will allow you to facilitate your students’ application of carbon, carbon compounds, and carbon cycle knowledge to real environmental issues. In this way they apply knowledge, analyze issues, synthesize concepts, and evaluate proposed solutions.

(Perhaps clips from the DVD An Inconvenient Truth can be your hook to engage students and begin your exploration of the carbon cycle. A class debate might serve as a summative assessment. See Mrs. Sunda's Debate Lessons for comprehensive information on managing student debate on topics including global warming.)

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by Mary LeFever

Mary LeFever is a resource specialist for the Middle School Portal, and a doctoral candidate in science education at Ohio State University. She has taught middle school and high school science and is an adjunct instructor of biology and natural sciences at Columbus State Community College. Please email any comments to msp@msteacher.org.

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Copyright July 2007 — The Ohio State University. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0424671. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.