In this unit, students will understand where “fake news” comes from, why it exists and how they can think like fact checkers to become fluent consumers, evaluators, and creators of information. They will apply this knowledge by selecting a controversial topic to evaluate, synthesize, and analyze all aspects before sharing with a local audience.

In Part 1 of this unit, students will learn about data collection, graphing skills (both by hand and computer aided [Desmos]), and the fundamental mathematical patterns of the course: horizontal line, proportional, linear, quadratic, and inverse. Students perform several experiments, each targeting a different pattern and build the mathematical models of physical phenomena. During each experiment, students start with an uninformed wild guess, then through inquiry and making sense through group consensus, can make an accurate data informed prediction.

Students are confronted with a scenario of a student who is texting and driving in the school parking lot and they are tasked to determine the effect of various parameters to see if a student will collide with a pedestrian. Students must begin by breaking the scenario down into more manageable parts to determine what must be studied about the situation. Through a series of labs and activities, students learn how to model and predict situations with constant velocity and acceleration. Then, coding a spreadsheet, students model the complex situation of a texting driver, reacting, and braking during a potentially hazardous situation to create an evidence-based argument.

Bring the vocabulary of film to life through the processes of filmmaking. Students learn terminology and techniques simultaneously as they plan, film, and edit a short video.

In order to contextualize the Energy unit, students are tasked to engineer a bungee cord that will optimize the enjoyment of a doll’s bungee jump. To do this, students first develop the mathematical patterns through inquiry on gravitational energy, kinetic energy, and elastic energy. Once the patterns have been established, students further build on their spreadsheet coding skills, in order to use computational thinking to create a program that will help predict the length of bungee cord necessary for a variety of situations.

In this unit students will use what they know about how words are structured to read a variety of Expository Texts about the election process. Students will identify author’s point of view, explain why the author wrote the text and support their answer by citing proof in text. Students will then hold an election of their own, choose from a variety of topics they would like to vote on, then create digitally a campaign video communicating their point of view with details to support their point of view in hopes to persuade the audience to vote for their topic.

This unit on American Indians: By studying the regions of the United States and the cultures that live in each region, students are able to compare/contrast within regions and across regions how tribes used their environments, and their cultural and other contributions to American life.

Note that the emphasis here is on broader groups of tribes for each region with some instruction on specific tribes representing each region. In no way is this case study approach to learning about one tribe meant to be generalized to all tribes of that region. We understand that each tribe was and continues to be unique in its culture, practices, lifeways, and traditions.

The unit is focused on the examination of geography in terms of “place.” Students dive into inquiry to answer the compelling questions, “Where are we?” and “Who are we?” Through these two questions students will understand where they live and where people around the world live. Students will also dive into the term “culture” and define it through many characteristics. Students will examine and reflect upon their own culture and research different cultures of North America.

This unit is centered on designing a shoe for a customer. Students decide on a particular type of shoe that they want to design and utilize ideas of force, impulse, and friction to meet the needs of a particular customer. Force plates are used study the relationship between force, time, and impulse to allow students to get the mathematical models that allow them to make data informed decisions about their shoe design.

This video offers a brief review of 5 wonderful films that focus on specific topics in modern Latin American History.

In fifth grade unit 5, Reading Historical Fiction Book Clubs, students will be organized into reading clubs consisting of 3-5 students of similar reading levels as they read historical fiction text set made up of related historical fiction, informational text and primary sources (photographs, letters, posters etc.) How do readers read, analyze and interpret historical fiction text? to understand their historical fiction and the time period connected to the text.
Summarize a written text read aloud or information presented in diverse media and formats, including visually, quantitatively, and orally. Determine central ideas or themes of a text and analyze their development; summarize the key supporting details and ideas.

In this unit students will build and construct an understanding of how matter and organisms interact creating change in our biosphere and in turn affect all types of ecosystems. Then using these skills and content they will be able to communicate, model and create solutions to phenomena, environmental emergencies or concerns. environmental concerns or endangered organisms.

In this unit, students learn to find areas of polygons by decomposing, rearranging, and composing shapes. They learn to understand and use the terms “base” and “height,” and find areas of parallelograms and triangles. Students approximate areas of non-polygonal regions by polygonal regions. They represent polyhedra with nets and find their surface areas.

How does a one-way mirror work? Though most everyone knows that one-way mirrors exist, having students model how they work turns out to be a very effective way to develop their thinking about how visible light travels and how we see images. Initial student models reveal a wide variety of ideas and explanations that motivate the unit investigations that help students figure out what is going on and lead them to a deeper understanding of the world around them.

As the first unit in the OpenSciEd program, during the course of this unit, students also develop the foundation for classroom norms for collaboration that will be important across the whole program.

The goals of OpenSciEd are to ensure any science teacher, anywhere, can access and download freely available, high quality, locally adaptable full-course materials. REMOTE LEARNING GUIDE FOR THIS UNIT NOW AVAILABLE!

This unit on weather, climate, and water cycling is broken into four separate lesson sets. In the first two lesson sets, students explain small-scale storms. In the third and fourth lesson sets, students explain mesoscale weather systems and climate-level patterns of precipitation. Each of these two parts of the unit is grounded in a different anchoring phenomenon.

This unit on weather, climate, and water cycling is broken into four separate lesson sets. In the first two lesson sets, students explain small-scale storms. In the third and fourth lesson sets, students explain mesoscale weather systems and climate-level patterns of precipitation. Each of these two parts of the unit is grounded in a different anchoring phenomenon.

This unit is loaded with phenomena. The real world task of being a member of Oregon's Energy Commission that must create a 50-Year Energy Plan propels students through a learning arc that includes electricity, magnetism, power production, and climate science. After the Request for a 50-Year Energy Plan students jigsaw energy sources and power production. They need to understand the basic physics of how generators works leads us to build and explore motors (starting with speakers which also connect to the Waves & Technology unit) and inefficient generators (electric guitars). The need for large amounts of energy and efficient generators motivates us to engineer wind turbines and optimize solar cells for a local facilities use. Creating the rubric to evaluate large scale power production launches us into climate science. With all the learning of the unit students and many real world constraints student finally complete, compare, and evaluate their 50-Year Energy Plan.