Year-Long Transfer Goals:

Students will be able to independently use their learning to:

Ask questions, recognize and define problems, and propose solutions.

Safely and ethically collect, analyze, and evaluate appropriate data.

Utilize (create/analyze) models to make predictions and understand the world around them.

Make valid claims and informed decisions based on scientific evidence.

Effectively communicate scientific principles and reasoning to a target audience.

Next Generation Science Standards:

Students will understand the influence of engineering, technology, and science on society and the natural world, including:

Modern civilization depends on major technological systems, such as agriculture, health, water, energy, transportation, manufacturing, construction, and communications.

New technologies can have deep impacts on society and the environment, including some that were not anticipated.

First Nine Weeks

Earth History Connections, Scale of Geologic Time, and Intro to Global Change:

Understandings (Big Picture Ideas):

Scientific knowledge is based on the assumption that natural laws operate today as they did in the past and they will continue to do so in the future.

Earth changes both gradually over vast periods of time, and through catastrophic events that occur suddenly and violently.

Gradual atmospheric changes were due to plants and other organisms that captured carbon dioxide and released oxygen.

Essential Questions:

How does the idea of uniformitarianism explain the global changes we are witnessing today, and how can we use it to make future predictions about our cumulative affect on planet Earth?

How do scientists know that all living things on Earth are related?

Explain why the destruction of tropical rainforests is considered permanent and irreversible?

How does methane compare to CO2 as a greenhouse gas, and where do methane emissions originate from today?

What can understanding Earth’s past tell us about Earth’s future?

Second Nine Weeks

Earth as a System, Comparative Planetology, Formation of the Solar System, The Big Bang Theory, and The Life Cycles of Stars:

Understandings (Big Picture Ideas):

Earth is a complex system made up of components that work together to recycle energy and matter.

Every change in one component of a closed system will change every other component of the system.

There is no such thing as “away;” throwing something away in a closed system like Earth is not possible.

Each planet in the solar system has its own characteristics, as do Kuiper belt objects and Oort cloud comets beyond Neptune, and the Sun at its center.

Science assumes the universe is a vast single system in which basic laws are consistent.

The Big Bang theory is supported by observations of distant galaxies receding from our own, of the measured composition of stars and non-stellar gases, and of the maps of spectra of the primordial radiation (cosmic microwave background) that still fills the universe

Other than the hydrogen and helium formed at the time of the Big Bang, nuclear fusion within stars produces all atomic nuclei lighter than and including iron, and the process releases electromagnetic energy

Supernova explosions seed empty space with these heavier elements when large stars collapse, creating second generation stars and planets

Essential Questions:

How can planet Earth as a system be compared with the human body as a system?

What happens to an article of trash that is "thrown away" on planet Earth?

What is the difference between a scientific theory, a scientific law, and a hypothesis?

Did the Universe have a beginning, and will it last forever?

How has evidence informed scientists in the development of theories for the origin of the universe?

What does evidence suggest were among the first generation of objects that developed within the universe and how did these objects form?

What are the origins of the carbon, silicon, oxygen, iron, uranium, and other heavy elements on Earth?

Third Nine Weeks

Interior Earth, Continental Drift, Plate Tectonics, and Weather and Climate:

Understandings (Big Picture Ideas):

Evidence from seismic waves, reconstructions of historical changes in Earth’s surface and magnetic field, and an understanding of physical and chemical processes lead to a model of Earth with a hot but solid inner core, a liquid outer core, a solid mantle, and crust.

Motions of the mantle occurs primarily through thermal convection, which involves the cycling of matter due to the outward flow of energy from Earth’s interior and gravitational movement of denser materials toward the interior.

Earth’s crust is made up of several plates that interact in various ways, producing topographic features such as mountain ranges, volcanic island chains, and deep ocean trenches, and result in earthquakes, and volcanoes.

Predictions can be made where natural disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanoes will occur based on the movement of the plates.

Earth’s atmosphere and oceans act as systems that absorbs and distributes matter and energy.

The movement and circulation of the ocean is tied very closely to the movement and circulation of the atmosphere due to the uneven distribution of available solar energy with latitude.

Changes in the atmosphere due to human activity have increased carbon dioxide concentrations and thus affect climate.

Earth’s atmosphere has been evolving for the past 4+ billion years. Today, anthropogenic atmospheric changes are increasing the overall temperature of the globe by enhancing the greenhouse effect.

Essential Questions:

What evidence do seismic waves provide about the internal structure of the Earth?

How does uneven heating, density of fluids, and direction of fluid movement describe the characteristics of the Earth's interior?

How can the understanding of tectonic plate interactions lead to accurate predictions of where volcanoes, earthquakes, mountain ranges, oceanic trenches, and underwater rift zones should be found?

How are global CO2 concentrations and global temperatures related, and what are the consequences for increasing carbon emissions today?

How does the cumulation of human action affect the atmosphere and biosphere in the forms of global climate change or severe weather?

Fourth Nine Weeks

Extinction Events and the Sixth Extinction, Resource Use and Conservation, and Independent Study:

Understandings (Big Picture Ideas):

Earth is currently being altered at an unprecedented rate by human activity.

Today’s generation, as well as future generations, will have to solve unique global problems due to changes of the Earth system, such as climate change, deforestation, and resource conservation due to human population growth.

Earth’s atmosphere and global ocean have been evolving for the past 4+ billion years. Today, anthropogenic atmospheric pollution and pollution from land runoff are increasing the acidity of the global ocean and causing dead zones.

Biodiversity loss due to human population growth is occurring at rates near those during past mass extinction events.

Essential Questions:

How will the increase of the human population have on climate change, deforestation, and other modern global environmental issues?

On a human scale, which resources can we describe as renewable and which are non-renewable?

How do we identify natural resources (e.g., land, water, fossil fuels), and make claims about its benefits to society and about the environmental impacts related to its development?

Which reservoirs and processes are important to the recycling of carbon and other essential nutrients in the Earth system?