Climate Action Almanac Lesson Plans
By Nicole Oster, PhD Student
Learning, Literacies, Technologies
Mary Lou Fulton College for Teaching and Learning Innovation
These lesson plans are drawn from the Climate Action Almanac, a collection of speculative fiction stories, essays, and artwork created by an international group of contributors that envision positive climate futures grounded in science and diverse global geographies to inspire hope and catalyze present-day action. These lessons are designed to help educators integrate futures thinking—the practice of imagining, analyzing, and working toward possible futures—into middle school classrooms. The lessons are modular in design, meaning they can be taught as complete units or selected individually to complement the existing curriculum. Each unit combines English Language Arts and social studies standards while engaging students in speculative fiction, critical analysis of innovation and environmental change, and creative problem-solving around climate futures. Time estimates are provided, but lessons may take more or less time based on student needs.
This work from the Center for Science and the Imagination is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 
Unit 1: Climate Futures and Speculative Fiction
This unit includes activities for mapping climate futures, building innovation timelines, and developing characters through role-play, culminating in students drafting, revising, and sharing original speculative stories.
Unit 2: Climate Futures and Artificial Intelligence
Students compare human and AI approaches to futures thinking, examine political and economic motivations behind those decisions, and design their own vision of a climate future shaped by people, technology, or both.
Unit 3: Climate Futures and Community Action
Students create VR storyboards depicting contrasting dystopian and hopeful climate futures for their community, conduct research on real solutions, write action plans, and share their work with peers and local elected officials, practicing authentic civic engagement.