Appendix A: Implementing District and State Standards
District
Jefferson Union High School District (JUHSD) has an established pacing guide for Earth Science curriculum, which teachers of the course are expected to follow. This pacing guide can be found on the JUHSD website. The topic from the pacing guide that is supported by this unit is the California Mineral, Energy and Soil Resources within the unit on Earth's Materials.
State
The following are from the Science Content Standards for California Public Schools, 2000.
- Energy in the Earth System: (4a) Students know the relative amount of incoming solar energy compared with Earth's internal energy and the energy used by society, and (6d) Students know how computer models are used to predict the effects of the increase in greenhouse gases on climate for the planet s a whole and for specific regions.
- Biogeochemical Cycles: (7b) Students know the global carbon cycle: the different physical and chemical forms of carbon in the atmosphere, oceans, biomass, fossil fuels, and the movement of carbon among these reservoirs.
- California Geology: (9a) Students know the resources of major economic importance in California and their relation to California's geology.
- Investigation and Experimentation: (1a) Select and use appropriate tools and technology...to perform tests, collect data, analyze relationships, and display data, (1d) Formulate explanations using logic and evidence, (1i) Analyze the locations, sequences, or time intervals that are characteristic of natural phenomena, (1k) Recognize the cumulative nature of scientific evidence, (1l) Analyze situations and solve problems that require combining and applying concepts from more than one area of science, (1m) Investigate a science-based societal issue by researching the literature, analyzing data, and communicating the findings. Examples of issues include...choice of energy sources...in California.
Newly Proposed Standards
Among the above traditional and still currently followed standards, the proposed Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) are currently in the revision phase for a second draft. These new standards directly address human behavior and environmental issues, as well as engineering and technology links. In the event that these standards are adopted, this curriculum unit addresses the following performance expectations from the May 2012 Draft of the NGSS.
HS.ESS-HS Human Sustainability (b) Reflect on and revise design solutions for local resource development that would increase the ratio of benefits to costs and risks to the community and its environment, (f) Identify mathematical relationships using data on the rates of production and consumption of natural resources in order to assess the global sustainability of human society, and (g) Construct arguments about how engineering solutions have been and could be designed and implemented to mitigate local or global environmental impacts.
HS-ETS-ETSS Links Among Engineering, Technology, Science, and Society (c) Analyze data to compare different technologies designed to accomplish the same function regarding their relative environmental impacts, costs, risks, and benefits, and what may need to be done to reduce unanticipated negative effects, and (d) Construct or critique arguments based on evidence concerning the costs, risks, and benefits of changes in major technological systems related to … energy … needed to support a growing world population.
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