APPENDIX ON IMPLEMENTING DISTRICT STANDARDS
Students will use the Life Cycle Assessment to critically analyze the impacts of rare earth elements on the environment and living organisms. This objective addresses the HS-ETS1-1 standard that asks students to analyze a major global challenge and specify qualitative and quantitative criteria and constraints for solutions that account for societal needs and wants. Employing the inventory analysis and impact assessment components of the LCA will provide a more complete understanding of the total ecological footprint of technologies and applications that employ rare earth metals. These activities address standard HS-ETS1-3 which asks students to evaluate a solution to a complex real-world problem based on prioritized criteria and trade-offs that account for a range of constraints, including cost, safety, reliability, and aesthetics as well as possible social, cultural, and environmental impacts. Standard HS-ETS1-4 asks students to create a simulation that models the impact of proposed solutions to complex real-world problem, while standard HS-ETS1-2 suggests that students design a solution to a complex real-world problem by breaking it down into smaller, more manageable problems that can be solved through engineering. Each of these standards is relevant to the design aspects of this unit. The aluminum recovery laboratory is informed by standard HS-PS2-6 which asks students to communicate scientific and technical information about why the molecular-level structure is important in the functioning of designed materials. The common core standard RST.9-10.1 which states that student should use specific textual evidence to support analysis of science and technical texts, attending to the precise details of explanations or descriptions is used throughout the unit’s analysis of various texts.
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