Pursuit of Happiness
Nov 13 - Jan 19
The Pursuit of Happiness
What do we need to be happy?
Project Overview
Greenspire Middle School is answering big questions related to the pursuit of happiness.
Social Studies
Students will investigate geography how geography impacts civilizations happiness and survival. What causes civilizations to thrive? They will use their findings to analyze happiness in our culture and region.
STEM
Students will explore the phenomena of tectonic activity on Earth that leads to volcanism, earthquakes, tsunamis, and landslides and evaluate the preparedness needed to meet basic needs and to mitigate injury and death.
ELA
Students will be reading about, researching, and writing about different things that are purported to bring happiness.
Outdoor Ed/PE
In Outdoor Education students will be answering questions about the ways nature makes us feel. What are the ways nature makes us feel? How do we communicate our thoughts and feeling about nature to others?
Literature
We will be reading a realistic fiction novel together that addresses how events can have lasting impacts on our lives. There are many things that affect us and sometimes we need help from others!
Content Standards
Social Studies
Describe the transition of many cultures from hunter-gatherers to sedentary agriculture (domestication of plants and animals).
Explain the impact of the first Agricultural Revolution (stable food supply, surplus, population growth, trade, division of labor, development of settlements, changes to the environment, and changes to hunter-gatherer societies).
Use historical and modern maps and other sources to locate, describe, and analyze major river systems and discuss the ways these physical settings sup-ported permanent settlements and development of early civilizations.
Describe how the invention of agriculture led to the emergence of agrarian civilizations (seasonal harvests, specialized crops, cultivation, and development of villages and towns).
Examine early civilizations to describe their common features, including environment, economies, and social institutions.
Describe pastoralism and explain how the climate and geography of Central Asia were linked to the rise of pastoral societies on the steppes.
STEM
Develop a model to describe the cycling of Earth's materials and the flow of energy that drives this process.
Construct an explanation based on evidence for how geoscience processes have changed Earth’s surface at varying time and spatial scales.
Develop a model based on evidence of Earth’s interior to describe the cycling of matter by thermal convection.
Construct a scientific explanation based on evidence for how the uneven distributions of Earth's mineral, energy, and groundwater resources are the result of past and current geoscience processes.
Analyze and interpret data on natural hazards to forecast future catastrophic events and inform the development of technologies to mitigate their effects.
Construct a scientific explanation based on evidence from rock strata for how the geologic time scale is used to organize Earth's 4.6-billion-year-old history. (may do more during the sturgeon project)
Literature
Cite several pieces of textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.
Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze its development over the course of the text; provide an objective summary of the text.
English Language Arts
Write arguments to support claims with clear reasons and relevant evidence.
Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing and present the relationships between information and ideas efficiently as well as to interact and collaborate with others.
Draw evidence from literary or informational texts to support analysis, reflection, and research.
