Education Standards
Air Quality Across Washington Location Details and Demographics
Asthma and Your Lungs
Breathing Easier 3D Assessment
Breathing Easier - Guidance for Educators
Community Action and Leadership Examples
Data Collection Activity Sheet
Data Collection Activity Sheet
Dylos Air Quality Monitor
Dylos Air Quality Monitor
EarthGen (website)
Lung Health Risk Awareness Solutions
Omar & Tai
Omar & Tai
Omar & Tai
Source of Pollution Sorting Game
Source of Pollution Sorting Game
The Four Spheres Reading
WA Health Disparities Map Navigator and Guided Inquiry
Breathing Easier (5th)
Overview
Breathing Easier is a 5th-grade curricular program created by EarthGen. For this unit, we offer professional development training and assistance with implementation. If you are interested in implementing this program at your school or district, please let us know! Please contact info@earthgenwa.org for more information.
EarthGen and Puget Sound Clean Air Agency have partnered to develop opportunities for learning about local air quality (AQ). Using interactive maps, multimedia resources, classroom discussions, community science, and data analysis, students will explore the causes of air pollution and its relationship to environmental justice. These lessons are aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards and encourage students to engage in argumentation from evidence and propose solutions to socio-ecological issues of air quality and public health for communities in Washington.
Introduction
Students will explore the following overarching questions:
- What is air pollution and what are its sources?
- How does where you live influence your health?
- How do communities draw upon their unique forms of knowledge and power to advocate for air quality?
- How can students take action to protect themselves and their communities from air pollution?
Performance Expectations and Crosscutting Concepts
These lessons are designed to support the Next Generation Science Standards for 5th grade and each lesson allows students to practice and develop different skills. However, the unit has been successfully implemented with 3rd through 5th grade and adapted for middle school students. Please note that this program is designed to be open-ended and flexible. The individual educator may make adjustments and additions to the lessons that meet their needs for particular Science and Engineering Practices, Disciplinary Core Ideas, and Crosscutting Concepts — as well as opportunities for transdisciplinary connections. We welcome your feedback throughout the implementation and evaluation process regarding how you adapted the activities to your grade level and students.
NGSS Performance Expectations Addressed Through Breathing Easier
| Standard | Detail |
|---|---|
| 5-PS1-1 | Develop a model to describe that matter is made of particles too small to be seen. |
| 5-ESS2-1 | Develop a model using an example to describe ways the geosphere, biosphere, hydrosphere, and/or atmosphere interact. |
NGSS Crosscutting Concepts Addressed Through Breathing Easier
Cause and effect: Mechanism and explanation. Events have causes, sometimes simple, sometimes multi-faceted. A major activity of science is investigating and explaining causal relationships and the mechanisms by which they are mediated. Such mechanisms can then be tested across given contexts and used to predict and explain events in new contexts.
Stability and change: For natural and built systems alike, conditions of stability and determinants of rates of change or evolution of a system are critical elements of study.
Commitment to Environmental Justice
The next generation will inherit two interconnected crises they did not create: climate change and environmental injustice. To respond to these realities through intentionally designed learning experiences, we committed to the use of a variety of pedagogical approaches that are woven into this program.
A prominent pedagogical approach is Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies, which build from the foundation laid by culturally responsive and culturally relevant practices. Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies allow, invite, and encourage students to not only use their cultural and community knowledges and practices in school, but to actively maintain and deepen them. Through the guidance and professional support provided in this program, teachers will have tools to weave these commitments into their teaching practices in ways that are responsive to their community contexts and collectively move toward environmental justice with students, families, and communities.
By creating learning experiences that center the specific place-based interests, histories, knowledge, practices, and priorities of students, families, and communities – especially those of the global majority – we’ll see students, families, and communities feel welcomed, respected, and intellectually cared for in science learning spaces within and beyond the classroom.
In each lesson, we outline key information, perspectives, and practices related to culturally sustaining pedagogies and environmental justice that you can incorporate into your practice. We encourage liberatory teaching and learning while practicing anti-racist principles, because it is relevant to the lives of all students and the environmentally just futures they deserve.
A framework guiding the enactment of these commitments is the Science Social Focus Framework, designed by Anastasia Sanchez and applied to an early analysis of our programs. This framework consists of key interconnected concepts such as:
Critical Consciousness - Promoting an awareness of others and society to apply appropriate empathy or critique through the lens of environmental justice. In Breathing Easier, we incorporate opportunities for students to investigate how different communities are burdened by air quality challenges. We provide support for students to critically analyze societal structures that reinforce the status quo.
Consequential Concern - Grappling with matters of future wellbeing and ecological caring as students make connections between science content and the consequential concerns facing society. The learning experience in Breathing Easier focuses on students’ experiences, observations, questions, and visions of their community. Equipping students with understandings and tools grounded in their local context enables solutions that are relevant and aligned with their values.
Critical & Liberatory Presence - Restorative justice-oriented representation that names the intersectional injustices faced by racially and socioeconomically marginalized communities — as well as their resistance, leadership, and flourishing. The students we center in this curricular experience are those who are disproportionately impacted by poor air quality and are often underrepresented in scientific narratives. By centering the diverse voices, knowledges, and practices of multiple communities, we aim to contribute to the sustenance of the whole student and their identities.
Unit and Lesson Structure
This unit is designed to be flexible and adaptable to your needs and the needs, interests, age, and experience level of the students you are working with! Based on students’ language experiences, you can ask them to gather their ideas through written text, demonstrations, and/or drawings in the included science journals. Most importantly, we hope you engage your students in authentic conversation about our focal topic and center collective inquiry on the many ideas and questions students themselves generate.
Each lesson in this unit has a suggested framework:
- Lesson Overview - We introduce a story element, conversation prompt, or a guiding question that focuses the planned learning for the day. As you progress through the unit, we encourage the incorporation of students’ questions from previous lessons that align with the upcoming content and activities.
- Main Activities and Materials - The sequence of the activities, related materials, and supplemental information to guide you and your students through the new content.
- Culturally Sustaining + Justice Centered Connections - Our opportunity to highlight how the lesson has been tailored to enable practices and conversations that are culturally sustaining and/or uplift the histories, perspectives, challenges, and innovations of frontline and BIPOC communities. This section may also include notes and commentary to help you navigate challenging conversations that occur when learning about environmental injustices and how they may impact your students.
- Concluding Reflection - a reflection question for students to engage with through sketching, journaling, or other creative forms of expression. This is an ideal point in each lesson for students to create dynamic representations of their knowledge and learning. When time allows, any of these concluding reflection prompts can also be used to facilitate small-group or whole-class discussions.
Finally, we also encourage the use of a cognitive routine at the start and/or conclusion of each lesson’s learning activities. Ambitious Science Teaching has a number of tools relevant for every science classroom. One option is the KLEWS chart, which is a modification of the well-known comprehension strategy known as KWL (Know, Want to Know, Learned). KLEWS stands for:
- K - What do we think we know?
- L - What are we learning?
- E - What is our evidence?
- W - What do we still wonder about?
- S - What scientific principles/vocabulary help explain the phenomena?
Where and how the KLEWS chart exists is up to you. Consider making a semi-permanent space on a bulletin board or whiteboard, or asking students to create one in their science journals. Using the classroom KLEWS chart, you can support shared learning by writing guiding questions and collecting student responses for all members of the class to see.
Resources for Teacher Learning
To provide context for the learning activities in this unit, we strongly encourage you to explore these resources prior to beginning your implementation. Many of these resources are also woven into the guidance for specific lessons below.
- National Geographic, Air Pollution (article)
- Puget Sound Clean Air Agency, Air Quality Data (data tools)
- Department of Ecology, Air & Climate (resource hub)
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Air Quality (resource hub)
- Intersectional History of Environmentalism (video, 15:16)
- NRDC, The Environmental Justice Movement (article)
- Environmental Justice, Explained (video, 3:33)
- A Brief History of Environmental Justice (video, 3:35)
- New York University, Trans Inclusive Practices in the Classroom (article)
- University of Michigan, Gender Diversity and Pronouns (article)
- Manola Secaira, Indigenous Fire Practices Once Shaped the Northwest — and They Might Again (article)
- #LandBack and Indigenous Sovereignty, with Paul Robert Wolf Wilson (podcast, 11:30)
- Learning in Places, Complex Socio-Ecological Systems, Relationships in Socio-Ecological Systems, Ethical Deliberation and Decision-Making in Socio-Ecological Systems, and Family and Community Framework for Engagement and Collaboration (frameworks)
- Candace Jackson, What is Redlining (article)
- Emily Badger, How Redlining’s Racist Effects Lasted for Decades (article)
- Redlining in Tacoma (video, 8:39)
- Rico Moore, How a Tacoma Gas Facility Started a Fight Over Climate Change, Sovereignty, and Human Rights (article)
- What Moss Tells Us About Air Pollution (video, 9:00)
- Ashli Blow, Using Moss To Push Government Action in Seattle’s Duwamish Valley (article)
- Moms Clean Air Force (advocacy organization)
- Liberating Structures
- STEM Teaching Tools, How Can I Foster Curiosity and Learning in My Classroom? Through Talk! (educator brief)
Important Definitions for Teachers
- Environmental Justice: “Environmental justice is the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies.” (EPA, 2019)
- Air Quality: “Air pollution comes from many different sources: stationary sources such as factories, power plants, and smelters and smaller sources such as dry cleaners and degreasing operations; mobile sources such as cars, buses, planes, trucks, and trains; and naturally occurring sources such as windblown dust, and volcanic eruptions, all contribute to air pollution. Air Quality can be affected in many ways by the pollution emitted from these sources. These pollution sources can also emit a wide variety of pollutants. The EPA has these pollutants classified as the six principal pollutants (or "criteria pollutants" - as they are also known). These pollutants are monitored by the EPA, as well as national, state and local organizations.” (EPA, 2019)
- Environmental Health: “Environmental health is the science and practice of preventing human injury and illness and promoting well-being by identifying and evaluating environmental sources and hazardous agents and limiting exposures to hazardous physical, chemical, and biological agents in air, water, soil, food, and other environmental media or settings that may adversely affect human health.” (NEHA, 2019)
Lesson 1: Breathing Easier
Lesson Overview
We are introduced to the unit through the experiences of Omar and Tai, two young people living in different parts of Seattle. Omar struggles with asthma that is made more severe by poor air quality, prompting the question “How does where I live have an impact on my health?"
NGSS Performance Expectations addressed in this lesson: 5-PS1-1
Main Activities and Materials
Story of Omar & Tai, Part 1 (10 minutes)
With your students, read Part 1 of the story about two friends from Seattle in Omar & Tai and discuss these questions:
- What was in the air that made Omar sick?
- Why didn't Tai feel any effects?
- Does our community struggle with health issues because of air pollution?
- How did Omar's mom know that the air was bad that day?
What Does It Mean To Be Healthy? (30 minutes)
Begin this conversation by inviting students to share their responses to the story of Omar and Tai. Select a few student volunteers to describe their connections, noticings, and wonderings from the story.
Ask your students to discuss in small groups what it means for an individual to be healthy. To record, organize, and illustrate their ideas, consider having the students create a Mind Map or another kind of visual organizer for their ideas about health. If your students need help getting started, you may consider providing examples regarding access to nutrition, physical activity, care, or spaces that are enriching and safe.
Next, ask students to repeat the process of idea sharing and documenting for what it means for an environment, neighborhood, or place to be healthy, or capable of supporting health and wellbeing. If students need help getting started, you can share examples regarding government support, civic structures, natural geography, community culture and behaviors, and built environments.
Then, you can select from these prompts to support small groups in sharing out their ideas and facilitate a whole class discussion:
- What does it mean for us as individuals to be healthy? What does it mean to be healthy as a family, or a community?
- What about your neighborhood feels good to you and brings you joy?
- What do you think could be better about the neighborhood?
Culturally Sustaining and Justice-Centered Connections
- Since there is a discussion about physical health in this lesson, ideas may come up related to dis/ability and health. Consider opening up conversations about how people have different bodies, and being physically healthy means different things for different people. At the same time, there are some things that have a negative impact on all living beings, although they may affect people differently depending on other aspects of their physical bodies. It may also be important to talk about how physical health is not always a trait of individual bodies (e.g. Omar is unhealthy because he has asthma) but can be a trait of socio-ecological contexts (e.g. a disproportionately high burden of air toxins created by systemic disinvestment and marginalization creates an environment in which it is harder for Omar to be healthy and thrive).
- Within the discussion of environmental health, encourage students to consider the perspectives of plants, animals, other living beings, and natural kinds (e.g., air, water) as well as the perspectives of humans. They may also want to think about what individuals need from their environment (e.g., clean air to breathe, clean water to drink, nourishing food sources, spiritual connectedness) as well as what communities need (e.g., cultural practices, knowledges and teachings).
- Tai, one of the characters in the story, uses they/them pronouns. As you facilitate this lesson, be prepared to discuss pronoun usage and gender identity with students. To learn more about these topics, check out Trans Inclusive Practices in the Classroom (New York University) and Gender Diversity and Pronouns (University of Michigan).
Concluding Reflection
In today’s conversations about health, were there new ideas or perspectives about health that you had not considered before? What are you curious about? What do you hope to explore in this unit?
Lesson 2: A Tale of Two Cities
Lesson Overview
This lesson begins with a return to the story of Omar and Tai, in which Tai is introduced to a mapping tool used to demonstrate the differences in environmental health risks across areas of Seattle. Your students will have a similar introduction to the mapping tool and other easy to access online resources.
NGSS Performance Expectations addressed in this lesson: 5-PS1-1
Main Activities and Materials
Story of Omar & Tai, Part 2 (5 minutes)
With your students, read Part 2 of the Omar & Tai story and discuss these questions:
- What is “public health”?
- What kind of knowledge does a public health professional focus on?
Orienting to Our Local Place (10 minutes)
It is important for students to connect the stories, concepts, and lessons in this unit to their local area and their knowledge of its histories and present circumstances. The first step is exploring a bird’s eye view of their community. We recommend using the various map features on Google Maps or Google Earth to locate your school and identify key features nearby. Consider guiding students to classify those features using the following categories and examples:
Built Infrastructure | Lands and Waters | Land Use |
|---|---|---|
Roads, bridges, buildings, streets, highways, ports, rail, utilities | Bodies of water, ridges, valleys, forests, plains, meadows | Residential, industrial, commercial, parks, utilities |
As you describe and categorize features of your local neighborhood, invite your students to mark items that could support (+) or adversely impact (-) environmental health or public health.
Investigating Air Quality and Health in Seattle (25 minutes)
We turn our attention back to Tai’s home city of Seattle by exploring a new mapping and visual tool. For this activity, each student will need access to a computer with an internet connection. If technology is a barrier, you can also project the mapping tool and engage in the activity as a whole class. The mapping tool is accessible on mobile devices, but for the easiest viewing experience we recommend a laptop or computer.
Give each student a copy of the Washington Health Disparities Map Navigator + Guided Inquiry. Ask students to complete the guide to the best of their ability. Alternatively, consider inviting students to complete the activity in pairs or small groups.
Through the Washington Health Disparities Map exploration, students may begin to notice patterns, similarities, and differences between north and south Seattle and the characteristics of your town. A whole-group debrief of the map exploration is a good opportunity for students to share their noticings and wonderings and add their ideas to a KLEWS chart to guide later learning.
As an optional extension to expand students’ understanding of why some communities are disproportionately affected, read this article entitled Even Many Decades Later, Redlined Areas See Higher Levels of Air Pollution.
Consider asking students to share their ideas about the article using these prompts:
- How do you feel about the information presented in the article?
- What questions, comments, or critiques do you have about the current situation in north and south Seattle?
Culturally Sustaining and Justice-Centered Connections
- See Lesson 1 for justice-centered considerations related to physical health and environmental health.
- Through reading the story of Omar and Tai, discussing what it means to be healthy physically and environmentally, and exploring the health disparities map, conversations may come up in which South Seattle and similar communities are characterized through a deficit lens. This could include comments about the physical places and/or the people and other living beings that inhabit that place. Be prepared to redirect students’ curiosity toward the systems and policies that might lead to these health challenges, the action and activism that community members practice to protect themselves and loved ones, and other more holistic and liberatory understandings of these communities. Share with students that we will be learning about and practicing community action and activism later in this unit.
Concluding Reflection
What do you think could be causing the difference in air pollution (PM 2.5) between north and south Seattle?
Lesson 3: Air Quality Influencers
Lesson Overview
Students expand their thinking about the types and sources of various elements that impact air quality. The focus of our understanding is particulate matter, and how students can observe its presence and recognize its impact on the environment and human health.
NGSS Performance Expectations addressed in this lesson: 5-PS1-1
Main Activities and Materials
Eliciting Students’ Ideas (10 minutes)
Begin by instructing your students to review their reflections and the ideas discussed in Lessons 1 and 2, including their thoughts on personal and community health and their initial observations of the Health Disparities Map.
Give students the open-ended prompt of “What is air pollution?” to record and respond to in their science journals. After a few minutes, invite them to share their ideas and write their ideas on a whiteboard so the class can reference their shared descriptions.
Pollution Sorting (30 minutes)
Ask students to form small groups. Use the Source of Pollution Sorting document to create a set of images for each small group. Note: Each group will have the same set of cards.
The task for each group is to sort the images into pollution categories. Ask students to make two piles, one polluting, the other non-polluting. How did they classify something as polluting or not? What kind of pollution does it create? How much pollution? These discussions can be open-ended, and that is where their unique categories come in. Give students time to come up with unique categories that help them tell the story of what they interpret from the images, informed by what they have learned or seen in their communities.
The types and descriptions of the categories are up to each group to decide, but some early scaffolding may be useful. Here are some example categories if students request support:
- Quantity of pollution: high, low
- Source: transportation, manufacturing, agriculture
- Health impact: severe impact, low impact
After each group has finished sorting, hold each card up one-by-one, asking the students if they think it causes air pollution. If there is disagreement on any of the cards, ask the various groups to share their thoughts and decision-making process. Support students to focus on building their shared interpretation.
Note: It may be beneficial to explain to your students that the manufacturing of some things, like the bike, can produce pollution. However, right now they are focusing on the direct impacts of each card.
Ask your students to get back in their groups to discuss and identify patterns they notice about the things that produce pollution. After a few minutes, regroup as a whole class and ask the students to share out. Examples of patterns could include:
- Things that produce exhaust, fumes, smoke, etc.
- Things found in our community
- Things that require burning a form of energy (fossil fuels)
- You can see something coming out of it
Once patterns like those listed above have been identified, write the words exhaust and particulate matter on the board or chart for students to reference. Ask the class what they think these terms mean. Once some ideas have been gathered, point to examples of exhaust from the cards (e.g., tractor or airplane). Generate a shared definition based on students’ ideas, and feel free to reference the definitions below to support students’ thinking. Move through this same process again for particulate matter and point to the image of a wildfire.
- Exhaust: Pollution released into the air from a combustion machine
- Particulate Matter: Small to microscopic solids and liquids in the air.
Point to the cards that cause air pollution and ask your students if they have seen any of these things in their community. This may be a good point to check in and invite your students to share their thoughts and emotions about the presence of pollution in their community. Give them an opportunity to turn and talk with a partner, which might feel less intimidating than sharing in the whole group. Validate the range of emotional responses that are coming up for students and remind students that they will be learning and planning for ways to take action to address air quality issues locally.
Culturally Sustaining and Justice-Centered Connections
- In the discussion toward the end of the Pollution Sorting activity, cultural practices that create particle pollution may come up. For example, students may share that their families and communities use practices such as lighting incense, candles, and smudging, and that these practices share characteristics with the pollution producer cards. Be intentional about framing so that students do not come away with the belief that these culturally significant practices are bad. This could be an opportunity to open up conversations about scale; for example, how much particle pollution do these practices create, compared to the exhaust from a car or a plane? This could also become a conversation about choice; how is it different for a family to choose to use incense, versus being unable to decide how much pollution from motor vehicles and industrial production they are exposed to?
Concluding Reflection
Although individuals contribute to these forms of pollution, many companies have a much larger impact on air quality in our communities. How should companies and individuals be held responsible for their role in creating pollution?
Lesson 4: The Four Spheres of the Environment
Lesson Overview
Building on the knowledge they have gained from previous lessons, students will be introduced to the four spheres of the environment. Students will engage in a modeling activity to predict the ways air pollutants interact with and influence all of the spheres. We provide readings and vocabulary about wildfires as a focal point for their modeling to demonstrate the interactions among the spheres and pollutants.
NGSS Performance Expectations addressed in this lesson: 5-ESS2-1
Main Activities and Materials
You may choose to introduce this topic by sharing the Four Spheres video with the whole class to learn about each sphere’s characteristics. One possibility for strengthening students’ understandings of the four spheres is asking them to share examples of their own (and/or their families’ and communities’) ways of interacting with each sphere.
Reading and Modeling the Four Spheres (30 minutes)
To establish a deeper understanding of the Four Spheres, your students may use the 4 Spheres readings and expand their vocabulary by exploring the bolded words. This reading is the first part of a collective practice of modeling. Give each group of students a large whiteboard or sheet of paper separated into four equal quadrants, each labeled with one of the four spheres of the environment: hydrosphere, biosphere, atmosphere, and lithosphere. In their small groups, students work together to interpret the information in the readings into key words, images, and diagrams to illustrate the components and interactions of each sphere.
Four Spheres: Modeling A Wildfire’s Impacts (15 minutes)
To bring the Four Spheres into our context of investigating and understanding air quality and air pollution, we’ll use a wildfire example to consider how pollutants move through and influence the earth systems.
To introduce the topic of wildfire, you can open by asking students what they know about wildfires either from direct personal experience, family members’ experiences, and/or stories they have heard. These forms of prior knowledge can be a powerful starting point for the modeling they are doing in this lesson. As students share their stories, you can invite them to think about what spheres are involved in their stories.
To supply additional background information, consider sharing these resources and watching the video with students:
Using their existing models of the four spheres, students will model how a wildfire interacts with or is influenced by each of the four spheres. These event cards represent potential inputs (causes) and outputs (effects) of a forest fire. Students may use any combination of cards to add to their four spheres models. Students should pay attention to the placement of selected cards into the appropriate sphere quadrants and how the interaction of two or more spheres influences an input or output.
Example: Landslides (lithosphere) can occur when there is significant precipitation (hydrosphere) after a major fire.
Culturally Sustaining and Justice-Centered Connections
- While exploring the phenomenon of forest fires in this lesson, consider incorporating discussions about Indigenous communities’ traditional use of controlled burns and other fire management strategies. These practices are an important form of land stewardship, resource management, tribal sovereignty, and cultural and scientific expertise. To learn more, check out the article entitled Indigenous Fire Practices Once Shaped the Northwest — and They Might Again and the podcast #LandBack and Indigenous Sovereignty, with Paul Robert Wolf Wilson.
- As you facilitate learning about the four spheres, consider that this model is specific to Western scientific ways of knowing. In particular, the division between the “living” biosphere and the “non-living” atmosphere, hydrosphere, and geosphere is a culturally specific distinction. Consider how this living versus nonliving binary might be related to colonial ideas of human-nature separation and human supremacy. Rather than binary categorizations, we encourage focusing on interactions, interconnections, and interdependencies among and between the spheres. This relational perspective is important for healing our earth as well as sustaining multiple cultural knowledge systems, particularly Indigenous ways of knowing.
To learn more about complex socio-ecological systems, check out these educator frameworks from Learning in Places: Complex Socio-Ecological Systems and Relationships in Socio-Ecological Systems.
Concluding Reflection
Once students complete the activity, give them time to discuss their findings and share the sphere influences that they found. In addition, ask them to share their thoughts around the following question: What environmental sphere interactions are relevant to our community? Why?
Lesson 5: Above and Below
Lesson Overview
In this lesson, students dive deeper into the interactions between spheres by exploring how pollutants released into the air can eventually impact our soil and waterways. Through exploring the case study of the Tacoma smelter plume, students dig into pollution as an environmental justice issue and explore how we can protect our communities from old and new contaminants.
NGSS Performance Expectations addressed in this lesson: 5-PS1-1/5-ESS2-1
Main Activities and Materials
Tacoma Smelter Past and Present (20 minutes)
In this lesson, students explore the historical and current impacts of the Tacoma Smelter as an example of how the four spheres interact in the context of ecological concerns. This investigation is centered around a storymap resource entitled ASARCO Smelter: Tacoma's Industrial Legacy that was created by Western Washington University for the WA Department of Ecology.
First, guide students to read the sections entitled A Brief Overview and Timeline Overview as a whole class. Invite collaborative sensemaking to identify and interpret unfamiliar vocabulary and concepts. Ask students to note down and/or share their initial noticings and wonderings about this information.
Then, divide the class into four small groups to engage in a jigsaw reading of the remaining sections of the storymap. Print out copies of the following sections and distribute them to the groups:
- Group 1: ASARCO Company
- Group 2: Environmental Impacts of Arsenic
- Group 3: Health Effects of Arsenic
- Group 4: What is Being Done About This? and MTCA Site Status
As the small groups work together to understand the information in their sections, you can provide support as needed to clarify terminology used in the storymap.
Ask each group to discuss these prompts:
- Who is involved in the story of the smelter? Who is involved in creating the environmental harm? Who is or should be responsible for cleaning up the pollution?
- What are people doing to address the pollution? What are individuals, communities, governments, and corporations doing?
- How are the four spheres and their relationships involved in this story?
Then, reconvene as a full class and invite each group to share one big idea that stood out to them in the section they read. This could be an idea related to one or more of the prompts above, or another idea that came up in their small group conversation.
Mapping the Impacts of the Tacoma Smelter (20 minutes)
In this next activity, students use a variety of mapping tools to explore the geographic range of the Tacoma smelter plume and the areas impacted by smelter-related pollution.
First, project the Dirt Alert map from the Washington State Department of Ecology on a screen or whiteboard. Guide students to interpret the colors displayed on the map using the legend. Work together to identify recognizable landmarks, including cities, bodies of water, and other features they are familiar with. Using these landmarks as reference points, guide students’ attention to how far the smelter plume extends and which areas are included. Invite students to share what they notice and wonder about this visual data.
Next, share with students that the smelter plume impacts different communities differently and that we can explore these differences using maps.
Project the BIPOC Populations map from the storymap resource. Share with students that the darker blue areas represent places where more communities of color live, and the lighter colored areas represent places where more white communities live. Invite students to share what they notice and wonder about the distribution of BIPOC populations.
Then, use the toggle button to add the layer representing arsenic levels in the soil. Share with students that on this map, higher arsenic levels are shown in red, orange, and yellow. Green indicates areas where arsenic is present but in smaller amounts. Pink indicates areas where there is a possibility of arsenic being present. Ask students to explore connections between the BIPOC populations map and the arsenic map. Are certain communities more exposed to arsenic than others? How is the smelter plume an environmental justice issue?
Remind students that this map indicates which communities are exposed to more or less arsenic. Within these communities, some individuals are also more vulnerable than others. For example, children are impacted more severely by arsenic because they are still growing and developing, and because they are more likely to encounter polluted soil while playing.
Project the Schools map from the storymap. Share with students that the red dots indicate elementary schools and the orange dots indicate middle schools. Then, use the toggle button to add the arsenic map. Invite students to share what they notice and wonder about this visual data.
Note: If time allows and students are interested, you can consider also exploring the Tacoma area on the Washington Health Disparities Map (used in Lessons 1 and 2). This allows students to consider other environmental harms that are present in Tacoma and the disparities related to race, socioeconomic status, and other factors.
Based on these mapping tools, engage students in a concluding discussion about environmental justice, vulnerable populations, and health disparities. Focus on the ethical implications of the Tacoma smelter and the responsibilities of polluting corporations. Consider these questions or others that students have generated throughout this lesson:
- Why was this smelter created? What benefits did it provide and to whom?
- Who should be held responsible for the environmental and health impacts? How?
- Who was likely most impacted by the airborne toxins while the smelter was operating, and who is currently most impacted by the soil and water contamination?
The final question above can support students in transitioning to the next lesson, which focuses on the health impacts of air pollution and how certain populations are more severely impacted than others.
Culturally Sustaining and Justice-Centered Connections
- In the mapping activity and discussion, we encourage you to engage students in critical analysis of the residential segregation of communities of color from white communities. Consider introducing the idea of redlining and sharing how the history of racist, restrictive housing policies has lasting impacts today. To learn more about redlining practices, check out these articles entitled What is Redlining and How Redlining’s Racist Effects Lasted for Decades. You might also want to watch this video focused specifically on the history of such racist policies in Tacoma, Redlining in Tacoma.
- In preparation for facilitating conversations about environmental justice, consider revisiting the resources shared at the beginning of the unit. This includes the Intersectional History of Environmentalism video, the article entitled The Environmental Justice Movement, and the short videos entitled Environmental Justice, Explained and A Brief History of Environmental Justice.
- When discussing issues of social and environmental injustice, it is important to highlight how communities of color and other frontline communities engage in resistance, activism, and political action. Without doing so, focusing on injustices can be another form of harm and victimization for marginalized communities. For example, consider sharing about a more recent environmental justice battle in Tacoma against a liquefied natural gas plant that worsens the existing environmental and climate challenges in the area. Organizing efforts are led by a coalition of Puyallup tribal members, immigrants and advocates impacted by the nearby Northwest Detention Center, and environmental activists. To learn more about this topic, check out this article How a Tacoma Gas Facility Started a Fight Over Climate Change, Sovereignty, and Human Rights.
Concluding Reflection
How can we restore the health of our soil, water, and communities after events like the smelter? What would it mean to move toward justice and healing?
Lesson 6: Our Health and Air Quality
Lesson Overview
In this lesson, we're drawing connections between air quality and our health, especially for the vulnerable populations in our community. Students will take a dive into our respiratory system and the factors that make poor air quality especially challenging for children, the elderly, and people living with preexisting health conditions. With this new information, students will have opportunities to practice their science communication skills and take action with an empathetic lens.
NGSS Performance Expectations addressed in this lesson: 5-PS1-1/5-ESS2-1
Main Activities and Materials
The Way We Breathe, Our Lungs (20 minutes)
A day with poor air quality is unpleasant and over time can become increasingly harmful to our health. There are many people in our communities that are especially vulnerable to air pollution even in small quantities. Heart disease, lung disease, and asthma are common illnesses that people live with. To understand these illnesses, we must understand how our lungs function.
Use the slides presentation Asthma and your Lungs to share with students some introductory information about our respiratory anatomy. Each slide combines key vocabulary and illustrations of respiratory structures. The purpose of this activity is for students to use these terms and definitions to articulate the interaction of body systems and the pollutants discussed in the previous lessons.
Key vocabulary for students: airway, trachea, bronchi, bronchioles, alveoli, mucus, inflammation
Risk + Awareness = Solution (20 minutes)
In this slide presentation entitled Lung Health Risk Awareness Solution, each slide contains a short scenario for your students to consider. For each scenario, support students to discuss what risks to lung health are involved, what information and awareness is needed in the scenario, and possible solutions for the individuals and the communities described.
To support students’ ideas regarding each scenario, you may consider sharing these two infographic resources on Asthma and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease from the CDC.
Each scenario invites students to generate ideas for Education & Awareness, Helping Hand Solution, and Community Care Solution. Here are some questions and prompts you may consider using to facilitate your students’ ideas and discussions.
Education & Awareness:
- What information could help the people in the scenario?
- How could they best receive or learn helpful information?
Helping Hand Solution:
- How could an individual, mentioned in the scenario or not, help out the people involved?
- If something could be added or removed from the scenario to improve the outcomes, what could it be?
Community Care Solution:
- If multiple people in the community or an organization could help, what could that look like?
- What would a community plan look like to prevent the harmful or challenging parts of the scenario from occurring?
Culturally Sustaining and Justice-Centered Connections
- This investigation of how air pollution impacts sensitive groups is a powerful opportunity to talk about collective care as a value system, which is an ethical priority in many global majority communities. Encourage students to consider and discuss questions such as: How can we all take responsibility for assisting and protecting folks who are most vulnerable to social and environmental harms? How do we already practice collective care in our families and communities? What would it look like to practice this value in environmental justice contexts? You may also consider connecting these conversations to broader social examples, such as a local mutual aid hub, or ecological examples, such as mycelial networks. This theme of collective care continues for the remainder of the unit, particularly the next three lessons.
Concluding Reflection
What does it mean to you to feel taken care of? How do you like to take care of others in your community?
Lesson 7: The Air We Breathe
Lesson Overview
In this lesson, students practice being community scientists by identifying locations around their school where they want to test the air quality. Using handheld air quality meters, the students work in groups to take measurements and identify patterns around their school’s campus. These data collection practices are grounded in an ethic of care.
NGSS Performance Expectations addressed in this lesson: 5-PS1-1
Main Activities and Materials
To prepare for this lesson, gather the Dylos air quality meters and the classroom set of clipboards and pencils from your Breathing Easier materials kit. Review the directions for how to operate the Dylos meters. To learn more about portable air quality sensors, you may also consider watching this video entitled Why Air Pollution Can Be Worse Across the Street. In addition, print out copies of the Data Collection Activity Sheet for each student.
Note: This lesson will take approximately 60-65 minutes. Please plan to facilitate this lesson on a day when you have a longer block of time available. Alternatively, you can consider dividing the lesson into two sessions, with the initial conversations and mapping on the first day and the data collection and debrief on the second day.
Data Collection as a Practice of Collective Care (5 minutes)
Share with students that we will be collecting data in this lesson. Data refers to “information, especially facts or numbers, collected to be examined and considered and used to help decision-making” (from the Cambridge Dictionary).
Ask students to consider what kind of data about air quality might be important to collect given what they have learned about air pollution and its health impacts. Prompt students to reflect on why these forms of data are important. Invite a few students to share their ideas.
Building on students’ ideas, emphasize that data collection and other forms of scientific inquiry can be a way to take care of our communities. For example, gathering data can reveal where challenges exist in the community and how we can protect those who are most vulnerable.
Mapping School Grounds (15 minutes)
Open Google Maps, click on the satellite view (in the menu in the bottom left corner), and project an image of your school and the surrounding neighborhood. Remove any labels that identify your school and invite students to determine what the map is showing.
After students recognize their own school campus, have them look more closely at the school and surrounding area on the map. Share with students that they are going to practice being community scientists. Ask students to imagine they have been asked to collect air quality data around the campus. If they were given a device that could tell them how good or bad the air quality was in a given location, where would they go?
Remind your students about the pollution producers they learned about in previous lessons. Have them work in groups of 4-5 to come up with 1-2 locations where they would be interested in taking a measurement and explain why. After a few minutes, encourage your students to think about indoor air quality as well. Where could they take an indoor reading? Then, invite students to popcorn out their ideas for locations. As they share, label the locations on the map, either digitally or by placing a sticky note on the board where the map is projected.
Once your students have had the chance to share their ideas, let them know that they will in fact have the opportunity to take air quality measurements around their school campus today!
Hand out a copy of the Data Collection Activity Sheet to each student. As a whole class, select a location from the brainstormed options that might have poor air quality. Students should write this location on their activity sheet under Location 1. Next, ask students to identify a place that might have good air quality. They should write this location under Location 2. Finally, ask students to choose one more place that they are curious about and write this location under Location 3.
Community Science in Our School (25-30 minutes)
Share with students that we will go outside to test the air quality using handheld meters. Pass out an air quality meter to each small group. Tell them that you will all walk to each spot together and that they should be passing the air quality meter around to each group member at each site.
Using the Dylos Air Quality Monitor guide as a reference, demonstrate to students how the air quality meters work and point out which number they should record. Please share with students that the equipment is fragile and valuable and they will need to be careful with it.
Walk with your students to each site they have selected. Ask students to record the number displayed on the meter on their activity sheet. The number may vary between devices and will jump up and down by a few digits because the meter is continuously taking measurements. Students can use an average number; it does not have to be precise. Ask your students to record their observations about each location on the activity sheet as well: What do they see? What do they hear? What do they smell?
Identifying Patterns and Takeaways (15 minutes)
Once students are back in the classroom, return to the projected Google Maps image. Review the data collected across the school campus and invite students to share their observations. Ask students if they notice any patterns in the data. For example, was the particle count higher next to the road or in the middle of a grassy area? Was it higher indoors or outdoors?
Ask students to explain why these patterns exist. Why are there differences across areas of campus? Why does this matter? Are certain people in the school community more sensitive to poor air quality? How can we take care of others in our school community?
Culturally Sustaining and Justice-Centered Connections
- In this lesson, students play important roles in participatory science and community science. These forms of democratized scientific practice are opportunities for youth to leverage the tools of science to care for their communities. Engaging in scientific inquiry and action in local places is crucial for community uplift and simultaneously supports students’ affinity for science, particularly for youth with marginalized identities. One local example of community science is a research project using moss samples to measure air pollution in the Duwamish Valley in Seattle. Learn more about the youth involved in this effort through this video What Moss Tells Us About Air Pollution and this article Using Moss To Push Government Action in Seattle’s Duwamish Valley.
Concluding Reflection
Did the data collection activity show that there are air quality concerns on your school campus? What are your ideas for how we can address air quality concerns around your school?
Lesson 8: Pollution Protection
Lesson Overview
In this lesson, students hear an update from Omar and Tai about how they care for and protect each other and their other loved ones when the air quality is poor. Students are introduced to public air quality monitoring resources where they can check the conditions of their local air.
NGSS Performance Expectations addressed in this lesson: 5-PS1-1
Main Activities and Materials
Checking In On Omar and Tai (15 minutes)
Read Part 3 of the Omar and Tai story as a whole class. Before beginning the reading, ask students to recall what they have already learned about Omar and Tai. After reading the story, ask students to reflect on and discuss the questions below:
- What actions do Omar, Tai, and their family members take to protect themselves and each other from the wildfire smoke?
- Think about the supportive relationships in your own life… Who are the friends, family, and/or community members who take care of and protect you? Who do you take care of and protect? What actions do you take to care for and protect each other?
Exploring Public Air Quality Data (20 minutes)
Next, students will practice interpreting public air quality data for their own local area. In this activity, students investigate real-time data that is generated by air quality monitoring stations. If possible, students should explore the data in pairs or small groups. However, if technology is a constraint, you can also project the mapping tool and engage in the data exploration as a whole class.
Share with students that they will be exploring websites similar to those that Omar and Tai’s family members use to keep track of local air quality concerns. Guide students to navigate to the Washington Department of Ecology’s Air Monitoring Network interactive map. Give students a few minutes to explore the map freely.
Then, share with students that each circle on the map represents the location of an air quality monitor that measures the amount of pollution in the surrounding air. You may want to share a photo of an air quality monitoring station to help students visualize what they look like.
Ask each group of students to select two of the monitoring sites. Encourage and support students to choose locations that are meaningful to them. This could include sites near their own school or community, areas where people they know live, or places that have been mentioned in this unit (i.e. Seattle and Tacoma). Ask each group to write down the locations of the two sites they have selected.
Share with students that the colors of the circles represent the current quality of the air in that location. Invite students to explore the color key on the left side of the map and identify which colors correspond to different air quality categories (Green = Good; Yellow = Moderate; Orange = Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups; Red = Unhealthy; Purple = Very Unhealthy; Maroon = Hazardous).
Ask each group to observe and record the current air quality in the two sites they chose. Is it currently safe for the communities in those locations to go outside? To do physical exercise outside? Is it safe for everyone, including more vulnerable populations like children, elders, and people with asthma? Remind students that the purpose of this map is to help people know what their local air quality is each day so that they can protect themselves and their loved ones.
Next, ask each group to partner up with another group. Ask students to compare and contrast the air quality at the sites that each group chose to explore. What patterns and differences do they notice? What questions or wonderings do they have?
Note: If you have time and students are interested, there are many possible ways to extend the learning in this lesson. Consider revisiting the interactive map each day to check the air quality at the station closest to your school or community. You can also explore the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency website or the online resources provided by the local clean air agency in your region. In addition, there are other interactive mapping tools for real-time air quality data such as the Purple Air map, which includes more locations.
Public Data and Collective Care (5 minutes)
To conclude this lesson, facilitate a whole-class discussion about this prompt: Based on what we’ve learned today, what new ideas do you have about how data collection and communication can help us to take care of each other, especially those who are most vulnerable?
Culturally Sustaining and Justice-Centered Connections
- Given its focus on public data sets, this lesson is a powerful opportunity to incorporate connections to civics education. Invite students to consider complex questions such as what it means to support public engagement with air quality data, the role of governments in maintaining air quality systems and infrastructure, and the different dimensions of shared responsibility for environmental and public health. Consider exploring the work of Moms Clean Air Force as an example of how community members use public data and other scientific insights to advocate for social and environmental justice. In Lesson 11, students will dive into more examples of sociopolitical action for clean air.
Concluding Reflection
Why is it important to have publicly available data about the air quality in different places? Why might this data be helpful? What kinds of people might use this data, and in what ways? (e.g., to advocate for clean air policies and fight against polluters, to change their daily activities, etc.)
Lesson 9: We Are Community Environmental Scientists
Lesson Overview
In this lesson, students continue to practice being community scientists. Students and educators go on a walking field trip with air quality monitors to expand the data collection area and investigate air quality concerns in their neighborhood.
NGSS Performance Expectations addressed in this lesson: 5-PS1-1/5-ESS2-1
Main Activities and Materials
In this lesson, students use the handheld air quality monitors to investigate the presence of air pollution in different parts of the neighborhood surrounding the school. Please be sure you are aware of specific policies and protocols for field trips at your school. Revisit the Dylos Air Quality Monitor guide in preparation for supporting students to use the meters again. In addition, print out clean copies of the Data Collection Activity Sheet for each student.
Note: As in Lesson 7, you may consider extending this lesson across two days depending on how much time you have available each day.
Affirmation of Students as Community Scientists (5 minutes)
Remind students that we have been learning about how data collection and communication are important practices of community care. Share an affirmation out loud with students: “We are community scientists who are learning about our communities through data collection in order to make our communities safer and healthier places to live.”
Ask students to reflect on the following prompt: “I am a community scientist because…” Encourage students to consider why being a community scientist is important to them. Give students a few minutes to reflect individually, then invite them to share with a partner.
Mapping the Neighborhood (15 minutes)
Share with students that they will be collecting more air quality data today. This time, they will gather air quality samples from a larger area surrounding the school!
First, ask students to consider where they, their families, and other members of their community spend a lot of time. What are some places where students hope that there is good air quality so that it is safe for them and their loved ones to visit? What kinds of activities do they do in these places, and how might these activities be impacted by air pollution if it is present? Give students a few minutes to generate 2-3 places where they or their loved ones spend a lot of time.
Then, project a Google Maps view of the local neighborhood. Invite students to popcorn out their ideas for locations to investigate. As students share, label the locations on the map, either digitally or by placing a sticky note on the board where the map is projected. Facilitate a discussion of whether they hypothesize there would be good air quality or poor air quality in these locations based on the presence or absence of pollution producers in the nearby area.
Note: Even if some of these places are too far away for a walking field trip, this reflection and conversation will help inspire students’ curiosity about air quality in their neighborhoods.
Next, hand out a clean copy of the Data Collection Activity Sheet to each student. As a whole class, select three locations that students are most interested in exploring. Students should write these locations on their activity sheets under Location 1, Location 2, and Location 3. Support the class to choose locations that are walkable from your school campus.
Community Science in Our Neighborhood (30-40 minutes)
Divide students into groups to explore the local community, and provide each small group with one of the handheld meters. Review instructions for how to use the air quality monitors. Before heading out, remind students of your school’s safety protocols and expectations for field trips.
As in Lesson 7, walk with your students to each site they have selected. Support students to share the air quality meter with their group members and record the numbers displayed on the meter on their activity sheet. Remember that the meter is continuously measuring air quality and students should select an approximate number within the range of numbers displayed at each location.
Ask your students to record their observations about each location on the activity sheet as well: What do they see? What do they hear? What do they smell? How do these observations compare with the hypotheses they made in the classroom?
After visiting all three data collection locations, facilitate a whole group discussion about the results of this investigation. Invite students to share: What patterns do you notice? What was surprising? What questions do you have?
Culturally Sustaining and Justice-Centered Connections
- Throughout this unit, we encourage you to center and leverage students’ prior knowledge and culturally specific ways of knowing. This focus is particularly important in this lesson, which features a scientific investigation grounded in students’ local community. Consider inviting students to share stories about their home experiences and build on these existing forms of expertise throughout this collective inquiry. In this lesson and beyond, these familial and community-based experiences are relevant and crucial to students’ science learning.
Concluding Reflection
Did some places have worse air quality than others? Who might be most impacted? How are these differences fair or unfair? What could we do to take action and make our communities more healthy and just?
Lesson 10: Air Quality Across Washington
Lesson Overview
In this lesson, students explore case studies of different air quality issues in four regions across Washington State: Tacoma, Yakima, Lummi, and Spokane. In small groups, students learn about the social and ecological characteristics of their assigned region and compare it to other regions and their own local area. Then, students share their findings with each other and discuss the range of air quality issues across these locations.
NGSS Performance Expectations addressed in this lesson: 5-ESS2-1
Main Activities and Materials
Washington Tracking Network Environmental Health Disparities Map (15 minutes)
To begin this lesson, students will access and re-familiarize themselves with the Washington Tracking Network mapping tool that they explored in Lesson 2. Ask students to recall how they learned about differences in air quality between North Seattle and South Seattle and looked at air quality conditions in their own region of the state.
Exploring Case Study Regions (20 minutes)
Separate your students into small groups that will work together to learn about different locations in Washington using the Air Quality Across Washington document.
This activity is intended to broaden students’ horizons by exploring other regions in Washington and the air quality conditions they experience. Using the descriptions on the activity page and the Washington Tracking Network Environmental Health Disparities Map, students can form comparisons between different regions (case study, Seattle, and local area) regarding the air quality risks, the demographics of the locations, and other important factors.
Comparing Across Regions (10 minutes)
Give students plenty of time to gather information, including the option of engaging in additional research about each region’s communities and its air quality issues. Then, facilitate a whole group discussion in which each group shares insights and takeaways about the region they investigated. This process is aimed at answering a key question: How are air quality issues similar and different across Washington?
Culturally Sustaining and Justice-Centered Connections
- In this lesson, students learn about communities that may be similar to or quite different from their own. To deepen students’ capacity for empathy, compassion, and perspective-taking, consider asking students to reflect on and discuss questions such as: What do you think it would be like to live in these communities? What similarities do you notice between this community and your own community? What makes this community unique and a healthy place to live? What challenges does this community face, and how are community members responding to or addressing these challenges?
Concluding Reflection
What else would you want to know about these case study communities, including the places and the people who live there?
Lesson 11: Intersectional Environmentalists
Lesson Overview
The title of this lesson is inspired by the book and organization created by youth activist Leah Thomas, Intersectional Environmentalist. A central principle of her work is the idea of intersectionality, meaning that a person's social and political identities combine to create different experiences of discrimination and marginalization. These identities as well as our cultural communities shape our responsibilities, environmental relationships, and our ways of taking action in the world.
Our students, who come from diverse backgrounds and hold multiple identities, are encouraged to engage with scientific inquiry with their own communities and other communities in mind. This lesson provides an opportunity to learn from the air quality related actions and activism of scientists and community leaders from different places and identities.
NGSS Performance Expectations addressed in this lesson: 5-PS1-1/5-ESS2-1
Main Activities and Materials
Preparing for the Gallery Walk (15 minutes)
To open the activity, ask students to reflect on and share whether there are ways they, their families, and their communities protect themselves against air pollution or try to make sure they have healthy air available.
A locus of action model is a good way to help people think about where and how they can approach an environmental challenge. The locus of action model helps us identify and articulate what kind of effort it may take to make a difference. It can be organized into three levels: Civic/Societal, Group/Community, and Individual.
For your students, here are definitions you can use to describe each of these levels. You may also consider generating definitions and/or examples together as a whole class:
- Civic/Societal - At this level, it takes a whole society to organize and act to make an important change. Scales can be statewide, national, or global.
- Group/Community - This level involves a specific group of people, a region, a city, or a community like a school or neighborhood organizing and making change happen.
- Individual - This level is about what we can do with our own actions and choices as individuals. Individual does not necessarily mean alone: positive action by many individuals can make a huge difference, as can working in relationship with each other!
Intersectional Environmentalists Gallery Walk (30 min)
In the Community Action and Leadership Examples document, we have created profiles of activists and community leaders that your students can gain inspiration from. Many of the examples showcased in the gallery walk involve political action or broad educational campaigns, so starting the discussion with examples students are familiar with in their own lives could be a good way to also include examples of everyday action.
As students explore the profiles in the gallery walk, invite them to reflect on what stands out to them and what examples of action resonate with them the most.
As a full group, invite students to share out these reflections. You may also consider discussing these questions:
- Where do you see connections between the work these leaders are doing and the Locus of Action model?
- How can we learn from the values, ethics, and practices demonstrated by these leaders and activists?
- How do these demonstrate different relationships with air and air quality than are exhibited in dominant culture and systems?
Culturally Sustaining and Justice-Centered Connections
- Foregrounding the resistance and activism of BIPOC communities is a crucial practice within culturally sustaining and justice-centered pedagogies. As mentioned in Lesson 5, learning about the realities of systemic oppression without highlighting the agency of marginalized communities can further perpetuate harm. In addition, these liberatory stories are often not told within educational systems and are important for global majority students to feel a sense of belonging in learning environments and to feel that science is a powerful and useful tool for community uplift and wellbeing. If you are interested, please feel free to identify and share examples of BIPOC action and leadership related to this unit that are more relevant to the students, families, and communities you serve.
Concluding Reflection
What did you learn today that inspired you most? How did it feel to explore different examples of community action and leadership? What emotions came up for you?
Lesson 12: Community Planners
Lesson Overview
In this lesson, students apply what they know about air pollutants, air quality monitoring, and the unique makeup of communities, to build a vision of a healthier and more environmentally just community.
NGSS Performance Expectations addressed in this lesson: 5-PS1-1/5-ESS2-1
Main Activities and Materials
Reenvisioning Our Community (15 minutes)
Share with students that they will be engaging in a visioning activity based on what we have learned in this unit. Visioning means coming up with ideas about future possibilities that can guide how we take action in the present.
Invite students to close their eyes and consider: What do you want our community to look like? Sound like? Smell like? Feel like? Taste like? When you envision a healthy and just community, what does that mean to you?
Ask students to spend about 10 minutes creating a visual representation of their vision for their community. This can include images, diagrams, words, quotes, and more!
Then, ask students to share their visual representation with a partner. Encourage them to consider and discuss: What similarities do they notice? What differences are there between the two visions?
Making Equitable and Just Decisions (25 minutes)
Next, students will work together in groups of 3-4 to design a decision-making process that can lead to fairness and environmental justice in their community.
You may want to share with your students the definition of environmental justice from the EPA:
“Environmental justice is the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income, with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies.”
Share with students that they will be discussing their ideas and coming up with a plan in collaboration with their peers. Write several sentence stems on the board or a piece of chart paper: “I agree with you because…” “I disagree with you because….” “I like that idea and…” Emphasize that these sentence stems are useful for engaging in constructive, supportive conversations. In addition, encourage students to use specific examples and evidence from the previous lessons to support their ideas.
Provide students with the following prompts to discuss in small groups:
- How can we design a community that protects the health and wellbeing of all community members, especially those who are most sensitive to air pollution?
- We have learned that air pollution sources impact some people more than others because of where they live. What would it look like to have a decision-making process about pollution sources that is fair and just?
- Who needs to be considered and involved in this decision-making? Think about the four spheres: the biosphere, the lithosphere, the hydrosphere, and the atmosphere. How can we bring together the voices of all who should be involved in this decision-making?
Give students 10-15 minutes for small group conversation. Ask each group to select one person to record their ideas, one person to keep time, and one person to share out with the rest of the class. Let students know that they will be asked to share a summary of their ideas with the whole group.
As each group shares, record big takeaways on the board or a piece of chart paper. Consider asking follow-up questions to push students’ thinking, such as: Why did you decide that? What do you already know that helped you make that decision? Invite students to offer their feedback and pose questions as well.
After every group has had a chance to share, affirm each student’s contributions to this activity. Remind students that these are big questions that community members and leaders have to think and talk about all the time!
If time allows, invite students to share what they appreciated about this activity, and what they found challenging about the activity.
Culturally Sustaining and Justice-Centered Connections
- Although social and environmental justice has been a theme throughout this unit, it is more explicitly addressed in this lesson (in addition to Lesson 5). Before this activity, you may want to refer back to the “Teacher Preparation” section and review the background resources about the environmental justice movement.
- In this lesson, students engage in a complex, collaborative decision-making process about social and ecological systems. Engaging in these forms of ethical deliberation is an important dimension of scientific and transdisciplinary learning. In particular, be sure to emphasize the importance of perspective-taking, including how different human and more-than-human communities may be impacted by potential decisions. To learn more about this dimension of student inquiry, check out the Ethical Deliberation and Decision-Making in Socio-Ecological Systems framework from Learning in Places. Consider incorporating the prompts from the “Should We” questions framework to deepen students’ discussions.
Concluding Reflection
What role would you like to play in being a community activist and leader? What strengths and skills do you have that can support your work as an activist and leader?
Lesson 13: Breathing Easier
Lesson Overview
In this final lesson, students synthesize their knowledge about air quality and environmental justice to develop strategies to address air quality issues in their local community. Students work in groups to design action plans to improve air quality in their community or region. They present their ideas to the class and share constructive feedback with their peers.
NGSS Performance Expectations addressed in this lesson: 5-PS1-1/5-ESS2-1
Main Activities and Materials
This lesson is the culmination of what students have learned throughout this unit. If possible, we encourage you to extend this lesson across two days to allow enough time for students to develop their ideas and share authentic feedback with each other. In addition, refining and implementing the action plans can continue across multiple days, weeks, and even throughout the year.
Developing Action Plans (40 minutes)
Share with students that we will be designing action plans, or steps and strategies to address a challenge or opportunity that we notice. These action plans will be grounded in the learning we have done throughout the unit.
First, support students to revisit key concepts, data, and takeaways from each lesson in the unit. Gather and review materials from the learning activities, and encourage students to continue referencing these materials as they brainstorm their action plans.
Then, remind students about the locus of action model that they explored in Lesson 11. Designate a corner of the room for each of the four loci: individual and family, local community, education and communication campaigns, and organizing and policy change. Invite students to choose which locus they are most inspired by and move to a corner of the room to indicate their preference. Based on these self-selections, create small groups of 3-4 students.
Note: These loci are interconnected and may overlap as students begin their brainstorming. These are just a starting point to provide structure for student conversation!
Once students are in groups, prompt them to work together to design a proposed action plan. Their action plan should address an air quality concern in their school, community, or region that is based on evidence from the data they collected and other aspects of their learning. Support each small group to identify a concern that they would like to address.
Encourage small groups to engage in an open-ended brainstorm about how they can take action to address the concern they have identified. Examples of actions could include:
- An anti-idling campaign
- An interviewing and multimedia storytelling project with family and community members to understand and share their experiences related to air quality and air pollution
- A letter writing campaign to the EPA to protect the Clean Air Act
- A box fan and filter kit for students with asthma
- A color code system to alert students about air quality during morning announcements
- A town hall to hear from members of the school and/or local community about their air quality related concerns and experiences
- A tree planting project to improve local air quality
- Asking a scientist at your local clean air agency for data
- A presentation to school leaders, district leaders, and/or city leaders about protecting vulnerable community members
- And more!
After the initial brainstorm, students should discuss the benefits and drawbacks of each strategy and select one action plan to present to the rest of the class. Ask small groups to prepare a 2-3 minute presentation of their ideas. Encourage students to consider creative formats for their presentation, such as a poster, speech, talk show, skit, and more.
Note: As an optional NGSS alignment, introduce the following criteria and constraints that students should use to guide their proposals:
- Criteria: The proposal must improve air quality in your community.
- Constraints: We cannot purchase any materials.
- Feel free to add other criteria and constraints that are relevant to your class!
Sharing and Strengthening Action Plans (40 minutes)
Reconvene as a whole class. As each small group presents their action plan proposal, use a critical friends protocol for audience members to share supportive and constructive feedback with their peers. Consider a modified, abbreviated version of this Critical Friends Tuning Protocol:
- Presenters share their proposal and any specific areas for feedback
- Audience asks clarifying questions and presenters respond
- Presenters listen and take notes while:
- First, the audience shares what they appreciate about the project: “I like how…”
- Then, the audience shares their concerns and questions: “I wonder…”
- Then, the audience shares resources and ideas for next steps: “An idea I have is…”
- Presenters reflect on their takeaways and ask any clarifying questions
Following the presentations, facilitate a whole group discussion to select one action plan to refine and implement together as a class. If capacity allows, you can also consider supporting each group to implement their action plan after incorporating feedback from their peers. Designing, discussing, and implementing action plans can continue over multiple days. Action plans can also be designed and implemented in collaboration with family and community members.
Culturally Sustaining and Justice-Centered Connections
- In this lesson, students engage in constructive dialogue to strengthen each other’s ideas. In preparation, it may be helpful to establish community norms (or revisit existing classroom norms) to guide students to approach these conversations with the intention of providing care and support. In addition, consider exploring resources regarding Liberating Structures and Talk Activities to learn about additional scaffolds for generative classroom discussions.
- In brainstorming, discussing, and deciding on plans for collective action, cultivate space for meaningful engagement of students’ voices, perspectives, knowledges, and passions. Centering student leadership is crucial for facilitating action projects that feel empowering rather than contrived. In addition, consider designing the action plans in partnership with family and community members in order to take action in ways that authentically contribute to community uplift and wellbeing. To learn more about liberatory forms of family and community engagement, check out this Family and Community Framework for Engagement and Collaboration from Learning in Places.
Concluding Reflection
What are your biggest takeaways from this unit? What learning will you carry forward into other areas of your life? Why is this learning important to you and your community?
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