OpenSciEd Unit 7.6: Earth's Resources & Human Impact Teacher Edition

OpenSciEd Middle School science program addresses all middle school NGSS standards. This comprehensive science curriculum empowers students to question, design, investigate, and solve the world around them. 

• Phenomenon Based - Centered around exploring phenomena or solving problems
• Driven by Student Questions - Storyline based on students’ questions and ideas 
• Grounded in Evidence - Incremental building and revision of ideas based on evidence 
• Collaborative - class and teacher figure out ideas together
• Equitable - Builds a classroom culture that values ideas and learning of all

The OpenSciEd model uses a storyline approach, introducing phenomena that anchors storylines developing disciplinary core ideas, concepts, and science/engineering practices. Students are encouraged to dive deep into key points and solve problems through five activities. Students kick off a unit of study, investigate questions, piece together the puzzle in investigations, and problematize the next set of questions to investigate. 

Unit 7.6: How do changes in the Earth’s system impact our communities and what can we do about it?
This unit on Earth’s resources and human impact begins with students observing news stories and headlines of drought and flood events across the United States. Students figure out that these drought and flood events are not normal and that both kinds of events seem to be related to rising temperatures. This prompts them to develop an initial model to explain how rising temperatures could cause both droughts and floods and leads students to wonder what could cause rising temperatures, too. This initial work sets students up to ask questions related to the query: How do changes in Earth’s system impact our communities and what can we do about it?

Students spend the first lesson set gathering evidence for how a change in temperature affects evaporation, precipitation, and other parts of Earth’s water system. They use evidence to support a scientific explanation that two climate variables (temperature and precipitation) are changing precipitation patterns in the case sites they investigated. Students figure out that the rising temperatures are caused by an imbalance in Earth’s carbon system, resulting in a variety of problems in different communities. The unit ends with students evaluating different kinds of solutions to these problems and how they are implemented in communities. Students work through a systematic evaluation process to consider (1) each solution’s potential to solve the carbon imbalance, (2) tradeoffs associated with solutions based on student-identified constraints, and (3) whether the solution in question makes sense for their community’s stakeholders.