Carbon Cycle Adventure Story Game

• Tell the students you meant to teach them about carbon today but you cannot find any. Ask whether anybody saw carbon on the way into class. Let them argue.
• Write every suggestion of where carbon is found on the board. Take all of them, including the wrong ones.
• Ask for more. What is carbon? Where does it sit? They will reach pencil lead and coal quickly and take longer to reach their own breath, the sugar in a mango and the shell of a snail.
• How does carbon get from one place to another — what are the processes? And what forms does it travel in? (C, CO2, CH4, CaCO3, glucose.)
• Go back over the board and mark it up in two colours: the places carbon sits, and the processes that move it between them. Those are pools and fluxes, and that distinction carries the whole lesson.
• Group their answers into the major global pools: Atmosphere, Terrestrial Life, Soil, Surface Ocean, Marine Life, Deep Ocean, Fossil Fuels, Ocean Sediment and the Earth's crust.

Put students into groups and give each group one of the major carbon pools — atmosphere, soil, surface ocean and so on. Each group makes a poster about its pool, using the Carbon Cycle Adventure Story and anything else at the right level.

• A poster has to say where and how carbon is stored in that pool, and how carbon gets into it and out of it again — photosynthesis, respiration, decay, the ocean taking up gas from the air.
• It can also show what forms the carbon travels in: which compounds, and whether it is a solid, a liquid or a gas.

EXPLAIN

• Hang the station instructions and signs around the room before the class arrives. Spread them out, with enough floor space at each one for at least three students to stand and read.
• Each group hangs its poster beside the matching station and presents it — either as a short talk or as a gallery walk where the class moves round and reads.
• Answer whatever else comes up about pools and fluxes before the game starts. Once the dice are out, nobody is listening.

ELABORATE

• Give every student a Journey Table and a die. Tell them the game begins pre-1700 — before the industrial revolution, before coal was being dug up at scale. Walk through one turn yourself at a station so they can see how it is done, and make the point hard: every roll gets recorded, including the ones where they do not move.
• Split the class so that roughly the same number of students starts at each station.
• Students read their station, roll, move and record at their own pace. After ten turns they stand to one side so you can see who has finished.
• Flip the station sheets over to their post-1700 side.
• Students play another ten turns under the new conditions, recording as before.

EVALUATE

• Every student draws their own journey onto a shared diagram on the board — one diagram for pre-1700 and one for post-1700.
• An arrow each time they moved from one pool to another.
• A circle round the pool each time they stayed put for a turn.
• While the board fills up, students work on their own on What's Your Carbon Story. Do not discuss the two diagrams until every student's journey is on them — the pattern only appears once the whole class is up there, and it appears suddenly.

Atmosphere Pre-1700

You are joined to two oxygen atoms. You are carbon dioxide — CO2 — floating in the air.

Roll the Dice

If you roll a 1: stay in the Atmosphere for one turn, then roll again.

2 or 3: a plant has taken you in through photosynthesis and built you into a sugar, and then into a longer carbon chain. Join Terrestrial Life.

4, 5 or 6: you have dissolved into the water of the Surface Ocean.

Atmosphere Post-1700

You are joined to two oxygen atoms. You are carbon dioxide — CO2 — floating in the air.

Roll the Dice

If you roll a 1: stay in the Atmosphere for one turn, then roll again.

2 or 3: a plant has taken you in through photosynthesis and built you into a sugar, and then into a longer carbon chain. Join Terrestrial Life.

4, 5 or 6: you have dissolved into the water of the Surface Ocean.

Terrestrial Life Pre-1700

You are part of a carbon chain — cellulose in a tree trunk, sugar in a fruit, muscle in an animal.

Roll the Dice

If you roll a 1 or 2: respiration has turned you back into carbon dioxide and breathed you out. Go to the Atmosphere.

3, 4, 5 or 6: the plant or animal you were part of has died, and you have fallen to the ground, where you will soon decay. Go into the Soil. Carbon never dies.

Terrestrial Life Post-1700

You are part of a carbon chain — cellulose in a tree trunk, sugar in a fruit, muscle in an animal.

Roll the Dice

If you roll a 1 or 2: respiration has turned you back into carbon dioxide and breathed you out. Go to the Atmosphere.

3: you are wood, or crop stubble, and humans have burned you while clearing the land for something else. Go to the Atmosphere.

4, 5 or 6: the plant or animal you were part of has died, and you have fallen to the ground, where you will soon decay. Go into the Soil. Carbon never dies.

Soil/Detritus Pre-1700

You are part of a carbon chain — cellulose in a fallen leaf, lying on the ground.

Roll the Dice. If you roll a 1*, 2, 3 or 4**: stay in the Soil for one turn, then roll again.

*If you roll a 1 twice in a row, a stream has washed you off the land and carried you down to the Surface Ocean.

**If you roll a 4 five times in a row, you have been buried deep, out of reach of the air, and become a Fossil Fuel.

5 or 6: the chain you belonged to has decayed and released you as carbon dioxide. Go into the Atmosphere.

Soil/Detritus Post-1700

You are part of a carbon chain — cellulose in a fallen leaf, lying on the ground.

Roll the Dice

If you roll a:

1: the land has been dug up, ploughed or stripped bare, so when the rain comes there is nothing to hold you. You are washed off as runoff, into streams and rivers, and end up in the Surface Ocean.

2, 3 or 4**: stay in the Soil for one turn, then roll again. **If you roll a 4 five times in a row, you have been buried deep, out of reach of the air, and become a Fossil Fuel.

5 or 6: the chain you belonged to has decayed and released you as carbon dioxide. Go into the Atmosphere.

Surface Ocean Pre-1700

You are carbon dioxide, dissolved in the surface water of the ocean.

Roll the Dice

If you roll a:

1: stay in the Surface Ocean for one turn, then roll again. 2 or 3: the waves have shaken you out of solution, back into carbon dioxide gas. Go to the Atmosphere.

4 or 5: currents and mixing have carried you down into the Intermediate and Deep Ocean.

6: algae has taken you out of the water through photosynthesis and built you into a carbon chain.

Surface Ocean Post-1700

You are carbon dioxide, dissolved in the surface water of the ocean.

Roll the Dice

If you roll a:

1: stay in the Surface Ocean for one turn, then roll again.

2 or 3: the waves have shaken you out of solution, back into carbon dioxide gas. Go to the Atmosphere.

4 or 5: currents and mixing have carried you down into the Intermediate and Deep Ocean.

6: algae has taken you out of the water through photosynthesis and built you into a carbon chain. Join Marine Life.

Intermediate/Deep Ocean Pre-1700

You are carbon dioxide, dissolved in the deep water of the ocean, a long way down and in the dark.

Roll the Dice. If you roll a:

1*, 2, 3 or 4: stay where you are for one turn, then roll again.

*If you roll a 1 twice in a row, you have settled all the way to the sea floor and become Ocean Sediment.

5 or 6: currents and mixing have carried you back up to the Surface Ocean.

Intermediate/Deep Ocean Post-1700

You are carbon dioxide, dissolved in the deep water of the ocean, a long way down and in the dark.

Roll the Dice

If you roll a 1*, 2, 3 or 4: stay where you are for one turn, then roll again.

*If you roll a 1 twice in a row, you have settled all the way to the sea floor and become Ocean Sediment.

5 or 6: currents and mixing have carried you back up to the Surface Ocean.

Marine Life Pre-1700

You are part of a carbon chain inside a living thing in the sea — algae, a fish, or a whale.

Roll the Dice

If you roll a:

1, 2, 3, 4 or 5: you have been respired out as carbon dioxide gas. Go to the Surface Ocean.

6: the creature you were part of has died, and you are drifting slowly downwards. Carbon never dies. Go to the Intermediate and Deep Ocean.

Marine Life Post-1700. You are part of a carbon chain inside a living thing in the sea — algae, a fish, or a whale.

Roll the Dice

If you roll a:

1, 2, 3, 4 or 5: you have been respired out as carbon dioxide gas. Go to the Surface Ocean.

6: the creature you were part of has died, and you are drifting slowly downwards. Carbon never dies. Go to the Intermediate and Deep Ocean.

Ocean Sediment Pre-1700

You can roll all you like, but you are not going anywhere in a hurry. You are Ocean Sediment on the sea floor, on your way to becoming rock.

Roll the Dice

Stay where you are, unless:

You roll a 1 five times in a row — after millions and millions of years, crushing pressure and heat have turned you into Fossil Fuel.

You roll a 6 five times in a row — after millions and millions of years, a volcano has released you as carbon dioxide gas. Go to the Atmosphere.

Ocean Sediment Post-1700

You can roll all you like, but you are not going anywhere in a hurry. You are Ocean Sediment on the sea floor, on your way to becoming rock.

Roll the Dice. Stay where you are, unless:

You roll a 1 five times in a row — after millions and millions of years, crushing pressure and heat have turned you into Fossil Fuel Deposits.

You roll a 6 five times in a row — after millions and millions of years, a volcano has released you as carbon dioxide gas. Go to the Atmosphere.

Fossil Fuel Deposits Pre-1700

You are part of a carbon chain in coal, oil or natural gas.

Roll the Dice

You can roll, but you are going nowhere. You are an ancient plant, squeezed and cooked into a fossil fuel, locked under layer upon layer of rock, on land or under the sea. Nothing down here reaches the air.

Stay in the Fossil Fuel pool for all ten turns.

Fossil Fuel Deposits Post-1700

You are part of a carbon chain in coal, oil or natural gas.

Roll the Dice

If you roll a:

1, 2, 3 or 4: stay in the Fossil Fuel Deposits for one turn. Nobody has dug you out from under the rock yet. Roll again.

5 or 6: you have been mined or pumped out, and burned — in a car, a stove or a power station — and turned into carbon dioxide gas. Go to the Atmosphere. This is the arrow that did not exist before 1700.