The Greenhouse Gas Game: Using Play to Learn Complex Concepts

The UCAR Center for Science Education has developed two different games about greenhouse gases to be used with upper elementary and middle school students. The games enable students to role-play and interact with each other as they learn about the heat trapping properties of greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change. Learning about the interactions involved with the greenhouse effect can be challenging for students of this age; using the active learning and decision-making elements of games helps students achieve a deeper understanding of the topic. The games are part of an informal science educational program at the National Center for Atmospheric Research that teach students about climate change.

One of the games incorporates kinesthetic learning in a game of tag, where students roleplay as greenhouse gases, incoming solar energy, or outgoing infrared energy in Earth’s atmosphere. The second game, the focus of this demonstration, incorporates these same concepts about greenhouse gases in a board game. The primary learning objective of this board game is for teams of students to engage in challenges that determine the fate of the Earth’s atmosphere. They learn that human actions are contributing to the levels of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere, and that these gases impact the livability of our planet. To survive the game, teams must prevent the Earth’s temperature from reaching the top of a temperature tracker.