This unit is designed to build inquiry about and interest in the themes and topics woven throughout Educurious’s multi-unit Washington State History course. To start off, students discover and share how they are connected to their classmates by participating in a “Web of Connectedness” activity. Throughout the unit, students engage in mapping, data visualization, and cost-benefit analyses in order to unpack the theme of connectedness and answer the unit driving question: How are people in Washington connected to each other and the rest of the world? As students learn about resources, economies, innovations, people, and places in Washington, they draft a series of six interactive community boards that educate others about the ways in which people are connected. For the culminating product of this unit, student teams finalize one of their six draft community boards to help students in their school make connections between themselves, Washington, and the world.

The Cultivating Washington curriculum is intended to be a go-to resource for Washington state middle school educators seeking student-centered instructional materials that make learning about the history of the Pacific Northwest more relevant and meaningful for students.In addition, it is a resource for agricultural education teachers, parents, and community members interested in helping students discover the history and development of agriculture in the state of Washington.

Energy Matters is an adaptable science unit designed for middle school students. Through the activities in the unit, students will increase their knowledge of energy concepts, with a focus on energy efficiency and conservation, as well as build understanding of the relationship between energy production/consumption and climate change.

Students kick off the unit with an analysis of images by engaging in a Four Corners activity, in which they begin to unpack the many positive and negative impacts of innovations on communication, infrastructure, and workers’ rights. After this initial analysis, students listen to oral histories, read narrative accounts, and study photos of people and places, to answer the question: How does innovation impact communities in Washington? Throughout the unit, students research a transformative innovation in workers rights, communication, and infrastructure in order to create a thought-provoking photo essay about how their chosen innovation impacts people and places in Washington.

This unit begins with a challenge in which students must make a decision for the common good. The task highlights the importance of considering various stakeholder perspectives in order to serve the common good. Students transfer what they have learned to their study of a major dam project in Washington State. Teams focus on one of four projects (Upper Skagit Hydroelectric Project, Lower Snake River Project, Columbia River Gorge Project, Columbia River Basin Project). Each team works together to understand the perspectives of diverse stakeholders as they develop a response to the unit-driving question: How can dams in Washington serve the common good? Teams apply what they have learned to come up with a recommendation for the future of the dam project that considers how it will impact people and places.

This is a Teacher's Guide for The State We're In Washington: Your guide to state, tribal and local government. These quides are developed by members of the Washington State Social Studies Cadre.Well before Washington was a state, tribes lived and thrived (and continue to thrive) on the land in communities and worked together for their common good. Chapter 1 focuses on how the first people of Washington governed themselves. 

This unit is focused on the examination of a single topic, in this case, the Native Americans of the inland Northwest and conflict that arose when other non-native people started to settle in the northwest, and to specifically address the native populations that lived in the inland northwest. The materials were created to be one coherent arc of instruction focused on one topic. The module was designed to include teaching notes that signal the kind of planning and thinking such instruction requires: close reading with complex text, and specific instructional strategies or protocols are described that support students’ reading and writing with evidence are described in enough detail to make it very clear what is required of students and how to support students in doing this rigorous work. Materials include summative assessment of content and process, central texts, key resources, and protocols that support and facilitate student learning.