Appendix on Implementing District Standards
This unit dives deeply into some of the third-grade weather and climate NGSS standards. Students will map out climates of the world and see how climate changes with latitude. This activity ties in with NGSS standard 3-ESS2-2 where students need to describe different climates in the world. The NGSS standard 3-ESS2-1 requires that students be able to represent weather data in tables and describe the typical weather (or climate) in an area. Students will be graphing both temperature and precipitation to compare past and present temperatures in the Chicago area. NGSS requires that students be able to “make a claim about the merit of a design solution that reduces the impacts of a weather-related hazard” (6). In this unit, students will focus on the impacts of climate change in their community and evaluate the usefulness of a tool to combat climate change.
Since I work at an IB school, it is important that the units I create target both science and social studies standards while tying in CCSS during individual lessons. There is a lot of room for research and inquiry in this unit, which aligns with the Illinois Social Science inquiry standards SS.IS.1.3-5 and SS.IS.2.3-5 that require students to ask essential questions and supporting questions to help with their inquiry. Students will inquire about why Earth has different climates, why we have seasons, whether the Sun is a cause of climate change, and mitigation strategies related to climate change. This unit also allows students to get involved in identifying problems caused by climate change in their communities and how people are trying to solve them; social science standard SS.IS.7.3-5 encourages students to participate in problem-solving in their local community. Students will learn some basic geography of their area and be able to label important areas on the map, which aligns with geography standard SS.G.1.3. Overall, this unit should give students a solid foundation in weather and climate, their geographic location, and get them involved in their local community through problem-solving.
Individual lessons in this unit will be designed to incorporate the literacy CCSS, with a focus on informational text reading. Standards that align closely with this work are CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.3.1, CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.3.2, and CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.3.3. These standards reference students’ understanding of main idea of an informational text, asking good questions, and describing cause and effect within a scientific concept.
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