This inquiry by Karen Morley-Smith, Evergreen Public Schools, is based on the C3 Framework inquiry arc. Through shared reading, videos, articles, class discussions, reflections, and the study of natural rights and common good, students develop a rich understanding of the honey bee's role in the survival of life.

This is a two day presentation that kicked off the beginning of the Growing Elementary Science Project in October of 2019. This was a teacher professional learning session with the goal of increasing teacher content and pedagogical content knowledge through engagement in a learning cycle to answer the question "Where does a seed get the material it needs to become a plant and produce more seeds?" Teachers also experienced a structured planning session to support them in developing a garden centric science unit to do with their students. The resource includes the template and a completed model to explore. 

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.

How can we Design Cattle to Better Meet Human Needs?

In this high school Storyline unit on genetics and heredity, students are introduced to ‘SuperCows’. As they explore the vast variety of cattle breeds, students discover that cattle are specialized for different purposes and while similar, the ‘SuperCows’ are clearly unique. Students wonder what caused this diversity and specificity which leads to investigations about the role of inheritance, DNA and proteins.

This integrated OER unit focuses on the 4th grade NGSS bundle addressing Structure, Function, and Information Processing (Performance expectations 4-PS4-2, 4-LS1-1, and 4-LS1-2). Students are engaged in a storyline which presents them with the problem of preserving the pika population who live in the Columbia River Gorge, a species which has recently been threatened in this region due to climate change. Through a series of activities, labs, and field STEM experiences, students engage in scientific modeling and investigation, while building their understanding of how an organism’s internal and external structures enable survival, growth and reproduction. The unit culminates with the development of a product that can be shared with a public audience to instigate positive change in the community and help protect the pika.

Meaningful STEM learning can happen at home as we problem-solve around the house and make sense of intriguing phenomena around us! Join us as we explore plants and animals in nature and use them as inspiration to solve an everyday problem for our family!

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. 

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.

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.

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. 

For those who have previously discovered this resource, we would like to direct you to a new and improved version that now adds curated and freely available  informational "texts" (articles, passages, e-books, videos, podcasts) to support every NGSS Performance Expectation (standard) in grades K-5. This is to support elementary teachers with designing for learning that integrates science and literacy.  Click "View Resource" above for the link.This adds an additional layer to the previous resource that listed freely available activities, lessons, units, and whole-year curricula for every K-5 NGSS Performance Expectation.Please email kimberley.astle@k12.wa.us at OSPI Elementary Science with feedback and questions.  

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 resource is a phenomenon-based adaption to the Smithsonian's STCMS Matter and Its Interactions kit. The anchoring phenomenon event features a railroad tanker that collapses due to the phase changes of water that was used to clean it. Students will investigate what causes phase changes, energy transfer, thermal energy, the law of conservation of mass, and atoms and molecules throughout the three week unit.

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.