On hot days, fourth-grader Adriana Salas has observed that when the sun beats down on the pavement in her schoolyard it “turns foggy.” There are also days where the slide burns the back of her legs if she is wearing shorts or the monkey bars are too hot to touch. Salas, who attends Roosevelt Elementary School in San Leandro, California, is not alone in feeling the effects of heat on her schoolyard. Across the country, climbing temperatures have led schools to cancel classes and outdoor activities to protect students from the harmful effects of the heat.

Jenny Seydel, an environmental educator and founder of Green Schools National Network, encourages teachers to leverage students’ observations about their schools to make learning come alive. According to Seydel, when teachers use the school grounds as a way to learn about social issues, they’re using their school as a three-dimensional textbook. For example, schools’ energy and water conservation, architecture and lunches are rich with potential for project-based learning. “We can learn from a textbook. We can memorize concepts. We can use formulas, but we don’t incorporate that learning until it is real,” said Seydel.

Against the backdrop of climate change, Roosevelt Elementary School teachers turned to their schoolyards as a way to apply lessons about rising temperatures to the real world. While these issues can seem overwhelming to young students, exploring them within the context of their school can not only make lessons stick, but also encourage students’ sense of civic agency.

Armed with infrared thermometers and a map of their school, fourth graders at Roosevelt embarked on the “How cool is your school?” project created by Green Schoolyards America, an organization that works to transform asphalt-laden schoolyards into greener spaces. The guiding questions for the fourth graders were:

  • Is our school a comfortable place for children and adults when the weather is warm?
  • How can our school community take action to shade and protect students from rising temperatures due to climate change?

In groups of three, students of Dorie Heinz and Nicole Lamm classes measured and recorded the ground temperature at 25 locations around their school. As students gathered data from places like the tetherball courts, lunch area, and parking lot, a pattern emerged: materials matter. For example, one group found that the ground temperature they recorded at the main playground, which was made of rubber safety material, was almost 50 degrees hotter than the temperature they measured at their school’s grass playing field.

“Our school districts are one of the largest land managers,” Lamm explained to students. “Most schools are covered in asphalt and other materials that heat up in the sun, and schools generally have a lack of shade.”

Read the full article about learning about extreme heat by Nimah Gobir at The Hechinger Report.