This article highlights resources that can be used to supplement lessons on extreme weather, including games and video clips. The article appears in the free, online magazine for K-Grade 5 teachers Beyond Weather and the Water Cycle. The magazine focuses on the essential principles of climate science.

Download this comprehensive, 60-page elementary unit that was co-developed by the Fast Plants Program and Emily Miller (ELA/science elementary science education specialist) who helped author the Next Generation Science Standards) as an exemplar for supporting three-dimensional learning. Developed in 2014, the lessons in this unit that fall during the time when Fast Plants are flowering and being pollinated are the same lessons that were extracted as a stand-alone Bee-ing an Engineer unit, also used as an NGSS-aligned exemplar.

This 5-page handout aims to help students and their adult mentors explore topics and questions about the natural world and/or Fast Plants growth and development that could be investigated through research and experimentation. The handout is intended to inspire scientific question development that can lead to either independent investigations (e.g. for special projects, science fairs, etc.) and small group or class investigations.

This article highlights lessons that help K-grade 5 students understand that animals and plants can only survive in certain environments.The lessons support the theme of an issue of the free online magazine Beyond Weather and the Water Cycle. The theme is "We Depend on Earth's Climate."

Concepts underlying the first of the Essential Principles of the Climate Sciences are aligned with topics typically taught in the elementary grades. This article identifies lessons that will help elementary students develop an understanding of how Sun's light warms Earth and how variations in daylight hours are associated with seasonal change. This article appears in the free, online magazine Beyond Weather and the Water Cycle.

Repeated motion is present everywhere in nature. Learn how to 'make waves' with your own movements using a motion detector to plot your position as a function of time, and try to duplicate wave patterns presented in the activity. Investigate the concept of distance versus time graphs and see how your own movement can be represented on a graph.

In this lesson, students will be amateur mycologists--collecting and analyzing various mushrooms. Through observation and discussion, students will gain knowledge of the basic anatomy of mushrooms, their life cycle, and their method of reproduction through spores. Students will learn to create spore prints of mushrooms and label and preserve their spore prints, just like a mycologist. Students also will learn that by comparing spore prints, they can identify different mushroom species.

This article from Beyond Weather and the Water Cycle provides ideas on how school librarians can work with elementary teachers to teach about the Sun's impact on weather and climate. The author introduces the Standards for the 21st Century Learner, developed by the American Association of School Librarians. The author focuses on Standard 1, which calls for students to inquire, think critically, and gain knowledge through developing and refining questions, investigating answers, seeking divergent perspectives in information, and assessing whether the information found answers the questions posed. The free, online magazine draws its themes from the Seven Essential Principles of Climate Literacy, with each issue focusing on one of the seven principles.

This Immersion Unit provides a coherent series of lessons designed to guide students in developing deep conceptual understanding that is aligned with the National standards, key science concepts, and essential features of classroom inquiry (as defined by the National Science Education Standards). The goal of this unit is to provide students with an opportunity to explore the interdependency of living and nonliving factors in an ecological system. Students investigate the process of decomposition and examine the role that decomposers and other organisms play in the transfer of energy and matter. The Unit's overarching concepts are: Organisms need matter and energy to live. Science knowledge advances through inquiry. 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.

Download and print this colorful "Science Inquiry Map" Poster featuring the web of inquiry processes as described by the Five Essential Features of Inquiry from the National Science Education Standards. In addition, the model of inquiry described by the Five Essential Features aligns directly with the Science Practices described in the Next Generation Science Standards. Generally, this poster is used by elementary and middle-school teachers to support learners in being metacognitive about what science practices are in the foreground of their current work during an investigation.

This document is the step-by-step instructions for planting Fast Plants in a deli-container growing system like is used in Reading Green. The instructions include measurements that are then integrated into mathematics problems that are on the flip side of the planting instructions. The instructions are illustrated by our Fast Plants artist, Amy, to help all learners understand the steps.

Who knew that rocket science could have so much in common with botany and plant pathology? This is a human interest and science story that documents from firsthand accounts and artifacts the historical context and scientific events relevant to an important collaborative Fast Plant investigation on the MIR Space Station. The project coincided with pivotal historical events and involved many scientists, teachers, and students in the Ukraine and the US. The project was called the Collaborate Ukraine Experiment, and this story was written explicitly to present in an interesting way to students and teachers how engineering practices--as well as science practices--are important in the life sciences.

In this article, teachers find two unit plans (grades K-2 and 3-5) that use resources featured in the science and literacy articles in the magazine. The unit plans are modeled after the five key steps in the learning cycle: engage, explore, explain, expand, and assess, or evaluate. The plans are aligned with the science content standards of the National Science Education Standards and the English language arts standards of the National Council of Teachers of English and the International Reading Association. The plans appear in the free, online magazine Beyond Weather and the Water Cycle.

Video clips from federal and regional agencies show scientists at work with tools used to collect data about the climate and weather. This article, from the free, online magazine Beyond Weather and the Water Cycle, will help students visualize the tools and how they are used in the atmosphere, at sea, and other hard-to-access locations.

Visualizing is a reading comprehension strategy that can be applied to science-themed texts, according to this article from Beyond Weather and the Water Cycle, a magazine that integrates literacy and science skills instruction. The author identifies six online resources that have activities, lesson plans, and more information.

The 11 books selected for inclusion in the issue of Beyond Weather and the Water Cycle devoted to climate studies range from easy readers to biographies. Each book is briefly described; all were reviewed for accuracy and appropriate reading levels for students in grades K-5. Several books deal with careers in meteorology.