Climate Action With Cups


Taking climate action is as easy as... stacking cups!


PURPOSE

To teach youth that we must work together to take action on climate change. By communicating our efforts, we can get to our global goal of keeping global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees.




GRADE LEVELS

7-12

SUBJECTS

Science
Social Studies



students playing climate action with cups game

SKILLS DEVELOPED

Communication

Collaboration

Teamwork

MATERIALS NEEDED

Plastic cups

Elastic bands

String

TIME

10 minutes

Background

Paris Climate Agreement: The Paris Agreement central aim is to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change by keeping a global temperature rise this century well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Additionally, the agreement aims to strengthen the ability of countries to deal with the impacts of climate change.

Instructions

  • Prepare an elastic/string tool by tying multiple pieces of string to the same elastic band as shown in the picture. Add as many strings as people playing the game.

  • Write down a few climate actions on each plastic cup. These words should represent environmental actions you can take in your home. Examples:
    • Bike/walk to school, Carpool, Turn down heat at night, Composting, Zero Waste, Recycling, etc.

  • You now have one minute to stack all the cups as a team. One condition – YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO TALK / COMMUNICATE!

  • Debrief and ask your team how that was. Hard or easy?

  • Try the activity again, but this time you are allowed to talk.

Discussion

  • Was the activity easier now that they were allowed to talk? Did you do better or worse?

  • The only way we’re going to reach our goal of maintaining 1.5 degrees Celsius (writing our word) is if we’re working together and communicating. We have to rely on each other to keep writing our word. So Canada needs to do their part in holding their piece of the string so we don’t let the other countries down who are working hard to get to our goal.