This Google Folder leads to an online module that is designed for students to learn concepts of evolution, descent with modification, natural selection, and more. There is both a student guide and a teacher's guide to help navigate through the module. Google forms are also available to support learning throughout the module. Interactive activities and simulations are also included for students to enjoy and learn from. 

The development of systems and network concepts for students can begin with this highly interactive inquiry into cell phone networks. Cell phones serve as a handy knowledge base on which to develop understanding. Each cell phone represents a node, and each phone’s address book represents an edge, or the calling relationships between cell phones. Students conceptualize the entire cell phone network by drawing a graphic that depicts each cell phone in the class as a circle (node) connected by directional lines (edges) to their classmate’s cell phones in their address book. Students are queried on the shortest pathway for calling and calling pathways when selected phones are knocked out using school and classroom scenarios.

Students then use a simulation followed by Cytoscape, visually graphing software, to model and interrogate the structure and properties of the class’s cell phone network. They investigate more advanced calling relationships and perturb the network (knock out cell towers) to reexamine the adjusted network’s properties. Advanced questions about roaming, cell towers and email focus on a deeper understanding of network behavior. Both the paper and software network exercises highlight numerous properties of networks and the activities of scientists with biological networks.

Target Audience:
This is an introductory module that we recommend teaching before each of our other modules to give students a background in systems. This module can be applied easily to any content area and works best as written for students between 6th and 12th grades but can be adapted for other ages. The lessons work best when in-person with students. If you are looking for an Introduction to Systems for remote learning, please use our Systems are Everywhere module.

A team of middle school teachers developed an integrated unit spanning math, social studies and ELA, and focused the unit centering on the life of Galileo, including some of his investigations, his beliefs based on evidence, and his conflicts with the Catholic church.

The goal of this unit is that the students will be able to:
1. work in a blended learning environment to understand climate change and its impact on the world.
2. master a basic understanding of climate change
3. work in groups to research focused questions, present their research, and propose a way to combat climate change.
4. present their completed projects to their classmates. This unit is based on a lesson plan from The Learning Network found here: http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/04/22/guest-post-climate-change-questions-for-citizen-scientists/

This activity relates water temperature to fishery health within inland freshwater watersheds as a way to explore how environmental factors of an ecosystem affect the organisms that use those ecosystems as important habitat.

This Immersion Unit provides a coherent series of lessons designed to guide students in developing deep conceptual understanding that is aligned with the standards, key science concepts, and essential features of classroom inquiry (as defined by the National Science Education Standards).  Unit Overarching Concepts Populations of living organisms change or stay the same over time as a result of the interactions between the genetic variations that are expressed by the individuals in the populations and the environment in which the population lives. Science knowledge advances through inquiry. Unit Supporting Concepts Individual organisms with certain variations of traits (adaptations) are more likely than others to survive and reproduce successfully.When environmental conditions change it can affect the survival of both individual organisms and entire species. Natural selection determines the differential survival of groups of organisms. A small advantage in escaping a predator, resisting a drug, etc. can lead to the spread of a trait in a modest number of generations. Mutations are a source of variation in an individual’s genotype, and it can result in a change in phenotype––good or bad. Scientific progress is made by asking meaningful questions and conducting careful investigations, using appropriate tools and technology to perform tests, collect data, analyze relationships, and display data. No matter how well one scientific explanation fits observations, a new explanation might fit them just as well or better, or might fit a wider range of observations. In science, the testing, revising, and occasional discarding of explanations, new and old, never ends. This unit was developed through the large Math and Science Partnership project called System-wide Change for All Learners and Educators (SCALE), involving a collaboration among Los Angeles School District educators, California State University science and education faculty, and UW-Madison SCALE staff.

This lesson sequence guides students to learn about the geography and the unique characteristics of the Arctic, including vegetation, and people who live there. Students use Google Earth to explore the Arctic and learn about meteorological observations in the Arctic, including collecting their own data in hands-on experiments. This is the first part of a three-part curriculum about Arctic climate.

Students model how a complex system operates and how some parts of a complex system have more leverage or influence on the rest of the system. Students relate this to the interconnectedness of food webs.

This lesson provides teachers with support for using text-dependent questions to help students derive big ideas and key understandings while developing vocabulary from the series of poems, Danitra Brown Leaves Town. Danitra and Zuri are two city-girls and best friends, and Danitra goes away to her auntĺ䁥_s house for the summer. These poems tell a story about how the girls stayed in touch by writing letters to each other, and how they discovered that they could have fun apart from one another while still remaining friends.

Through ongoing partnership with teachers across New York City, New Visions has developed this course map for a high school biology course fully designed to the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and the New York State Science Learning Standards (NYSSLS). Each unit follows a common structure: students engage with an anchor phenomenon and develop questions; go through sequences of learning and sense-making to develop and iterate on answers to those questions; then complete a three-dimensional performance task.

This activity introduces students to stratigraphic correlation and the dating of geologic materials, using coastal sediment cores that preserve a record of past hurricane activity.

Students practice building food chains and webs, explore interrelationships in the EOL Food Webs Tool, then model the flow of energy in food webs.

This unit of investigation is introduced using the anchoring phenomenon of a rocket launch. Students investigate the concepts of what is fuel, why some materials react and others do not, the role energy plays in the rearrangement of atoms, and where does the energy to do this come from and finally what makes the rocket lift off if fire itself is not causing this.

In this 6-part activity, students learn about climate change during the Cenozoic and the abrupt changes at the Cretaceous/Paleogene boundary (65.5 million years ago), the Eocene/Oligocene boundary (33.9 million years ago), and the Paleocene/Eocene boundary (55.8 million years ago).

In this activity, students investigate the shifting of three penguin communities in response to climate change.

The purpose of the resource is to investigate changes in the major land cover types of Study Sites by examining Landsat satellite images acquired years apart.

This activity covers the role that the oceans may play in climate change and how climate change may affect the oceans. It is lesson 8 in a nine-lesson module Visualizing and Understanding the Science of Climate Change.

Portland Public Schools has developed this unit. Their hope is that ALL K-5 students will be able to access rigorous, standards-aligned science instruction that engages them in hands-on experiences and sense-making through student discourse. They want to encourage all students to be critical thinkers and lifelong learners. To that end, the science and ESL departments at Portland Public Schools, in consultation with NGSS writer Rita Januszyk, have developed units that are aligned with both Next Generation Science Standards and Oregon’s English Language Proficiency standards.

In this unit, students investigate how to protect a passenger in a mock car crash. Students learn about forces, including magnetic forces, and how they interact with objects. Students engineer a solution to protect a play-dough model based on what they have learned. Language focus is on describing movement, patterns, and supporting claims with evidence.

Natural High is a non-profit organization that focuses on the power of storytelling to transform lives. They engage storytellers who kids admire and trust and work with these influencers to create free and impactful content for educators and parents.The activities are designed to develop student understanding about the consequences of drug and alcohol abuse and also to support students in learning and practicing strategies to make healthy decisions. The evidence-based program is used in all 50 states and makes use of current scientific findings on youth behavior, brain development, social norming, and substance abuse prevention.This resource highlights activities in the Understanding the Consequences of Drugs and Alcohol area of focus. Visit the Natural High website at https://www.naturalhigh.org/ for additional materials.

This lesson provides teachers with support for using text-dependent questions and Common Core literacy strategies to help students derive big ideas and key understandings while developing vocabulary using the text, "Heat Wave." A fantastic heat wave hits a Kansas farm, roasting the geese, popping the corn in the fields, and causing other distressing events. The farm girl tries a few clever ways to get rid of it, and finally succeeds when she plants iceberg lettuce.