This is a two day presentation given to elementary teachers in the Growing Elementary Science Project in October 2019. The presentation contains a science immersion experience for the teachers learning about how a seed gets the materials it needs to become a plant and make more seeds. The learning highlights the use of phenomena within the context of a learning arc over the course of the two days to develop elementary teacher content knowledge related to living systems. Teachers were also supported in planning a science unit using the schoolyard garden context as an anchor for investigations. 

This task by ClimeTime educators, is designed for high school students studying the impacts of human activities on the carbon cycle and/or global warming. Given two people with different human activities, students compare and contrast the behaviors that impact climate change.
This resource includes a student task document, teacher guide, and task facilitation slides.

In this assessment task from ClimeTime educators, students explore data relevant to the claim “A change in air quality can affect rates of asthma-related hospitalizations.” using the Department of Health’s Washington Tracking Network (WTN). Students develop an argument based on the evidence they gather that supports or refutes the claim.
Resource includes a student task document, teacher guide, and task facilitation slides.

This task by ClimeTime educators at Graham Kapowsin High School, is for high school chemistry students studying pH and/or equilibrium or for high school environmental science students studying ocean acidification. Students identify patterns and connections between graphs of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, oceanic carbon dioxide concentrations, and ocean pH. Given chemical equations for calcium carbonate formation and bicarbonate formation, students explain how atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration increases and ocean acidification impact the ability of sea life to form shells.
This resource includes a student task document, teacher guide, and task facilitation slides.

Is Liquified Natural Gas needed in the Port of Tacoma? This task, by ClimeTime educators, is designed for students in grades 9-12 studying chemistry or environmental science. Students discuss their daily relationship to methane energy systems and marine-land environments, then they develop their abilities to compare and write arguments for managing the community’s energy needs.
Resource includes a student task document, teacher guide, and task facilitation slides.

The High School Integrated Conceptual Science Program (ICSP) is a NGSS-aligned curriculum that utilizes the conceptual progressions model for bundling of the NGSS, High School Conceptual Model Course 1 and strategies from Ambitious Science Teaching (AST) to focus on teaching practices needed to engage students in science discourse and learning. Course 1 is the High School Integrated Physics and Chemsitry Course.   The goal of these units is to encourage students to continue in STEM by providing engaging and aligned curriculum. The focus of this year long course is on the first year of high school (freshman).  While the course is designed to be taught as a collection of the units, each unit could be taught as a separate unit in a science course.  A video about the new course shared its unique approach to learning and teaching. Wenatchee School District, one of the participating districts, wanted a way to share the program with the community. https://youtu.be/9AGk19YUi2oCourse 1 of the ICSP development was funded by Northwest Earth and Space Sciences Pipeline (NESSP) which is funded through the NASA Science Mission Directorate and housed with Washington NASA Space Grant Consortium at the University of Washington.

In their continued support of climate science education, the Washington State Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) created these sample bundles of Washington State Learning Standards from multiple content areas that teachers could use to center their classroom instruction around climate change and climate science. 

Educators and students are excited and interested in learning about climate change, but many times we hear that they don’t know where to start. This series of videos was created by Dr. Kat Huybers, a glaciologist at the University of Washington. Dr. Huybers guides learners through four topics, including the following: It’s Warming, It’s Us, It’s Bad, and We Can Fix It. While watching these videos, the accompanying questions will guide learners in thinking critically about their relationship with climate change and also expose them to additional resources to deepen their understanding. These videos may work well as asynchronous foundational learning before a synchronous workshop.

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.

This lesson aims to teach students about invasive species, native species, and non-native species. The lesson also covers the potential damages that an invasive species can cause to an ecosystem.

During this course, participants will learn how to center investigations of local scientific phenomena in a Next Generation Science Standards storyline. Course educators will offer instructional strategies and climate and community data to help teachers connect to the interests and identities of students and support understanding of the impacts of climate change. In collaboration with fellow teachers, participants will imagine possibilities for this kind of teaching and learning in their own classrooms through brainstorming possible phenomenon-based storylines local to their own students.

Está demostrado que el cambio climático nos afecta a todos, pero no por igual. A pesar de las crecientes inversiones de millones de dólares para reducir los impactos del cambio climático, el año 2023 fue el año más caluroso en promedio para el planeta. Si los gobiernos internacionales están invirtiendo más para tratar de afrontar el cambio climático, ¿por qué parece que esos esfuerzos no están funcionando? El hecho es que no estamos abordando las causas fundamentales del cambio climático, esto es, las desigualdades perpetuadas por una sociedad capitalista.El siguiente plan de aprendizaje incluye una serie de actividades que se pueden realizar en un salón de clases o en un espacio comunitario de una manera más intergeneracional. Dependiendo de cómo se faciliten las actividades, el tiempo podría oscilar entre 30 minutos y 3 horas. La clave es promover el diálogo y permitir que los participantes compartan sus experiencias e ideas, en lugar de simplemente compartir información. El objetivo principal es el ejercicio de la conciencia crítica y la acción colectiva.

This OSPI resource provides curated collections of free activities, lessons, units, and informational "texts" (articles, passages, e-books, videos, podcasts) to support every NGSS Performance Expectation (standard) in grades K-5.  This resource is intended to support teachers with teaching science while also integrating science and ELA to grow student knowledge, thinking, application, and skills in both content areas.  Materials are organized into units based on the topics and essential questions in each grade. Resources listed are all freely available online, with some requiring teachers to create free accounts to access.  Some trade books are also listed that might be accessed through a library system. Gratitude is expressed to the Washington State Science Fellows, Science Fellows Emeriti, and ELA Fellows who contributed to curating the informational texts.  For questions or comments contact OSPI Elementary Science at Kimberley.Astle@k12.wa.us. 

Elementary Science and Integrated Subjects is a statewide Clime Time collaboration among ESD 123, ESD 105, and the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction. Development of the resources is in response to a need for research- based science lessons for elementary teachers that are integrated with English language arts, mathematics and other subjects such as social studies. The template for Elementary integration can serve as an organized, coherent and research-based roadmap for teachers in the development of their own NGSS aligned science lessons.  Lessons can also be useful for classrooms that have no adopted curriculum as well as to serve as enhancements for  current science curriculum. 

The Kindergarten Elementary Framework for Science and Integrated Subjects, Wild Weather, uses severe storms as a phenomena for exploring natural and man-made hazards and staying safe in those conditions.  It is part of Elementary Framework for Science and Integrated Subjects project, a statewide Clime Time collaboration among ESD 123, ESD 105, North Central ESD, and the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction. Development of the resources is in response to a need for research- based science lessons for elementary teachers that are integrated with English language arts, mathematics and other subjects such as social studies. The template for Elementary Science and Integrated Subjects  can serve as an organized, coherent and research-based roadmap for teachers in the development of their own NGSS aligned science lessons.  Lessons can also be useful for classrooms that have no adopted curriculum as well as to serve as enhancements for  current science curriculum. The EFSIS project brings together grade level teams of teachers to develop lessons or suites of lessons that are 1) pnenomena based, focused on grade level Performance Expectations, and 2) leverage ELA and Mathematics Washington State Learning Standards.

In early 2021, 80 Washington citizens from all walks of life gathered virtually to learn from 40 presenters to make recommendations to the Washington state legislature about how to mitigate climate change in our state. Specifically, the Assembly addressed was:How can Washington State equitably design and implement climate mitigation strategies while strengthening communities disproportionately impacted by climate change across the State?This series uses videos of the Assembly speakers to help teachers increase their climate change background knowledge, explore teaching resources and consider ways to bring this learning to students. Each session of the series includes 1 - 3 related recorded presentations from the Climate Assembly, plus accompanying materials, and activities. 

This sequence of instruction was developed in the Growing Elementary Science Prjoject to help elementary teachers who were working remotely.  We developed a short storyline that ties together a few sessions to help explore a specific concept.  We tried to include some activities that honored and included the student’s family and experience, and some that included the potential for ELA learning goals.
The book “Storm is Coming!” introduces students to the idea of severe weather. Students observe a time-lapse video of a hail storm.  Students interview a family member about a memorable weather event and what that person did to prepare and stay safe.  Students explore the implications of all of their interviews.  Students make plans for how they can prepare for future weather events, including an Engineering Design exercise. 
It is part of ClimeTime - a collaboration among all nine Educational Service Districts (ESDs) in Washington and many Community Partners to provide programs for science teacher training around Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and climate science, thanks to grant money made available to the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) by Governor Inslee. 

This lesson will introduce students to plastics and microplastics, allowing them to identify various categories of microplastics and how they can reduce the amount of plastic that is used. Students will learn how the consumption of plastics impacts the environment.

This assessment task, from ClimeTime educators, is aligned with middle school grades 6-8. The assessment context within the middle school curriculum is thermal energy transfer and developing a model for particle motion as energy transfers. Students are presented with a discrepant event when two ice cubes of the same size next to each other melt at astonishingly different rates. Before starting this assignment, students should have practice with drawing motion lines on particles and with drawing arrows for direction of heat transfer – this is not their first activity working with conduction and particles.
Resource includes a student task document, teacher guide, and task facilitation slides.

In this assessment task from ClimeTime educators, students model thermal energy transfer between a hot liquid and a cooler solid, exploring how this might also occur in everyday phenomena.
Resource includes a student task document, teacher guide, and task facilitation slides.