If you’re teaching climate change—or really any social studies class for that matter—I can’t stress enough how important it is to front-load the Claim Testers. Authority, Logic, Evidence, and Intuition aren’t just abstract ideas. They’re tools students need right away to help them sort through all the information they’re going to encounter, especially in a topic as complex and often controversial as climate change. I like Lesson 1.2 from the OER Climate Project, where students evaluate authority by ranking expertise and discussing perspectives. It gets them thinking critically right from the start. You can even take the concept from 1.2 and extend it by using AI to give you more scenarios. Also practice with additional short articles. Depending on your students, a video like Bob Bain’s “How Do We Decide What to Believe?” can also help introduce the concept, though it might feel a little dated now—something similar to that video can work just as well. Once those claim testers are introduced, they become a reference point you can return to constantly throughout the course. Students have to learn to pause and ask, “What claim tester applies here?” whenever they hear a big claim in class or in the news. I’m wondering—how any of you approach teaching the Claim Testers? What materials or strategies do you use to keep them front and center all year? With climate studies, these are huge- but even if not in the realm of climate, how do you use Claim Testers?
