In a hands-on exploration, students will learn to describe and quantify the porosity and permeability of soil models representative of both agricultural and natural environments. Students will use this information to relate the effects of various agricultural methods on soil porosity and permeability in an exercise that requires modeling the role of a soil assessment expert. Instructors are provided with directions for collecting or assembling simple soil models.

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Students will identify their perceptions of erosion by examining images of mountain and agricultural landscapes and discussing which environment is more erosive. They will use geospatial figures to compare erosion rates associated with both natural and agricultural landscapes in the United States. Students will then consider how the presence of agriculture has reduced the areas of soil production, replacing them with regions of soil loss. They will reflect on the negative impact of agricultural erosion on soil sustainability.

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Students will use SoilWeb -- , a smartphone and web application that pulls detailed soil survey data from both the 1:24,0000 Soil Survey Geographic database (SSURGO) and the 1:250,000 scale State Soil Geographic database (STATSGO). Students will retrieve soil information for the soil beneath them. They will diagram soil horizons and compare them to a profile of soil organic matter and determine the most fertile horizon. Finally, students will complete a jigsaw activity comparing local soil erosion rates, soil horizons, and soil organic matter to other sites. After students share site comparisons, they will reflect on our agricultural future and solutions needed to mitigate lost soil resources. They will discuss how the speed at which we implement soil solutions will impact society and the economy.

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Students will investigate how the factors that influence erosion work together to produce an overall erosion rate. In agricultural areas, these factors are rainfall-runoff erosivity, soil erodibility, slope characteristics, and agricultural practices. Students will analyze changes in precipitation predicted by climate change models to consider how a changing climate could influence erosion rates in agricultural areas.

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For a given region, students will use what they have learned about the interdisciplinary problem of soil sustainability to make recommendations for agricultural practices in response to potential changes in climate. Students will present their findings in a fact sheet that describes best practices for mitigating potential changes while remaining sensitive to stakeholder concerns and feasibility. Finally, students will complete a final personal reflection on their own learning.

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Word Count: 7669

ISBN: 978-1-55195-484-4

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Software Carpentry lesson on how to use the shell to navigate the filesystem and write simple loops and scripts. The Unix shell has been around longer than most of its users have been alive. It has survived so long because it’s a power tool that allows people to do complex things with just a few keystrokes. More importantly, it helps them combine existing programs in new ways and automate repetitive tasks so they aren’t typing the same things over and over again. Use of the shell is fundamental to using a wide range of other powerful tools and computing resources (including “high-performance computing” supercomputers). These lessons will start you on a path towards using these resources effectively.

Comprehensive literacy instruction for all students requires the use of tools and strategies that make the instruction accessible. The Unlocking Literacy for Students with Disabilities Modules will build on what you already know about literacy instruction by demonstrating how strategic tools or strategies can make literacy instruction accessible to students with complex communication needs and physical disabilities. Best practices and research-based strategies for literacy instruction, as well as K-2 English Language Arts (ELA) Common Core State Standards (CCSS), will be included throughout all modules. Universal Strategies & Technology ToolsModule 1 will equip educators and parents with foundational tools and universal strategies to improve literacy instruction for students with complex communication needs and physical disabilities.  The foundational tools and strategies will be applied within subsequent Unlocking Literacy modules.

How do students with physical disabilities learn to write?  In what ways can non-speaking students express the stories they have to share?  Module 4 describes how students with complex communication and physical access needs can participate in emergent writing.  The tools and strategies demonstrated in this module will provide teachers with guidance on how to support students with writing.  These tools and strategies will enable students to express ideas and share their learning.  Module 4 consists of the following sections:Introducing Emergent WritingPredictable Paths Toward WritingUsing Alternative Pencils for WritingUsing Eye Gaze Boards for WritingSpelling on High Tech - Keyboards & Phonetic KeyboardsCelebrating Student WritingWriting Implementation IdeasPairing Writing with PicturesPredictable Chart WritingEmergent Writing GoalsCommon Core Standards ReflectionResearch

This module focuses on best practices for instruction on alphabet knowledge and phonological awareness.  Explicit Instruction and the Cycle Approach to teaching letters and sounds are highlighted.  Instructional strategies and tools to extend literacy instruction to students with complex communication needs and physical disabilities are discussed.  English Language Art Common Core Standards are provided, along with research on instructional strategies to address the standards. 

An emergent reader is a young child who is in the early stages of learning to read. They are developing foundational reading skills and becoming aware of how written language works. Emergent readers rely on visual cues, context, and basic letter-sound knowledge to make sense of the text as they gradually build their reading abilities.  Emergent reading is defined as all of the behaviors and understandings of learners of any age that precede and develop into conventional reading. (Koppenhaver, Coleman, Kalman & Yoider 1991; Sulzby, 1985)Emergent reading strategies include providing opportunities for shared reading, self-selected reading, accessing various types of text, and building background knowledge. What if a student cannot hold a book and turn the pages of a book?  What if a student is non-speaking, how will they participate in reading experiences?  This module provides ideas for removing these barriers to provide rich emergent reading experiences for ALL students.

This is an interdisciplinary lesson that incorporates tools learned in Algebra about analyzing data representations to apply to historical and literary purposes.

Students will be given the opportunity to utilize Micro:bits in the music performance classroom. The provided lesson materials will help instructors program the Micro:bits with a program that will analyze their student's posture while performing.

This lesson is best used after direct instruction with tiered students to help them understand how to integrate a quotation into a sentence and use in-text citation.

In this lesson students will study the poem "War is Kind" and find examples of verbal irony.

This lesson is part of the Software Carpentry workshops that teach how to use version control with Git. Wolfman and Dracula have been hired by Universal Missions (a space services spinoff from Euphoric State University) to investigate if it is possible to send their next planetary lander to Mars. They want to be able to work on the plans at the same time, but they have run into problems doing this in the past. If they take turns, each one will spend a lot of time waiting for the other to finish, but if they work on their own copies and email changes back and forth things will be lost, overwritten, or duplicated. A colleague suggests using version control to manage their work. Version control is better than mailing files back and forth: Nothing that is committed to version control is ever lost, unless you work really, really hard at it. Since all old versions of files are saved, it’s always possible to go back in time to see exactly who wrote what on a particular day, or what version of a program was used to generate a particular set of results. As we have this record of who made what changes when, we know who to ask if we have questions later on, and, if needed, revert to a previous version, much like the “undo” feature in an editor. When several people collaborate in the same project, it’s possible to accidentally overlook or overwrite someone’s changes. The version control system automatically notifies users whenever there’s a conflict between one person’s work and another’s. Teams are not the only ones to benefit from version control: lone researchers can benefit immensely. Keeping a record of what was changed, when, and why is extremely useful for all researchers if they ever need to come back to the project later on (e.g., a year later, when memory has faded). Version control is the lab notebook of the digital world: it’s what professionals use to keep track of what they’ve done and to collaborate with other people. Every large software development project relies on it, and most programmers use it for their small jobs as well. And it isn’t just for software: books, papers, small data sets, and anything that changes over time or needs to be shared can and should be stored in a version control system.

In this engaging unit, students will design and plant a square-foot garden that will be their central tool. Through the growing season, they will explore nutrition content in their everyday lives and see how it relates to what they are growing.

In this engaging unit, students will design and plant a square-foot garden that will be their central tool. Through the growing season, they will explore nutrition content in their everyday lives and see how it relates to what they are growing.