Template to sketch out your educational unit – please download, complete and return to me.
Educational Unit Resources:
National Geographic Education – middle and high school units for remote learning
National Geographic’s High Adventure Science collection – aligned to NGSS as a collection, and “Climate Change” is one of their most popular
Next Generation Science Standards
Examples of Quality Science Lessons and Units via NGSS
Science Education Resource Center (SERC)
Download hundreds of ready-to-use teaching modules and upload or host your own. Earth science is a particular specialty – see Teach the Earth
Gallery Walk examples for Teaching Entry-Level Geoscience (SERC)
College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards
The C3 Framework might be better suited for aligning your unit, instead of NGSS
C3 Teachers Inquiry Archive
Archive with 200+ lesson plans and units, here called “inquiries.” A few examples:
Imperialism in the Phillippines – Grade 11
Civic Action Project – Grades 6-8
What’s so Special About Appalachia? – Grades 3-4
Source material on Grand Kankakee Marsh – some link directly to .pdfs:
“The Kankakee Marsh of Northern Indiana and Illinois”
Werner, 2017. “Everglades minus the Gators: Telling the Grand Kankakee Marsh story helps restore it” outdoorindiana.org
Kankakee Outwash Plain wikipedia page – good primer on geology of area
Isaacs, Marion. 196? “The Kankakee: river of history”
Glover, 2018. original grant proposal to the National Geographic Society Early Career program [please do not distribute]
Peters et al. (unpublised) “Pre-settlement Environmental Conditions in the Kankakee River Basin and the Grand Kankakee Marsh.” [sent as an email attachment 7/30 – please do not distribute]
“Everglades of the North” trailer and teaching materials (.pdf download)
*NOTE – the teaching materials have great additional resources on different subjects/aspects of the Kankakee Marsh, organized by topic. This is also a good example for how ed materials can be formatted, with example standards alignment at end. Rather than duplicating work, I believe we are still making a unique contribution, however. Our units will feature rubrics, multi-media, and science-based activities.
Kankakee Valley Historical Society
Ferrara et al. (accpeted) “Dredging Impacts on Soil Properties of the Kankakee River System 150 Years after Perturbation.” Wetlands.
UPDATES 08/12/2020 –
Slides from our call on 08/12 [.pdf]
The California Vegetation History unit or “classroom task” used as an example [.pdf]
SERC digital address for this unit – an example for writing overview/context
simple Grand Kankakee Marsh pre-Settlement map – click to download .jpg file:
with inset map N. America
no inset map
Broderick et al., 2018. “Sharp Savanna-forest Transitions in the Midwest Followed Environmental Gradients but are Absent from the Modern Landscape.” American Midland Naturalist 180: 1-17.
PowerPoint of all figures used in paper
High-resolution .png of Figure 2 from paper
Rubrics – click to download:
Research presentation, college seminar course
Many, many examples online for 1 – 5 or letter grade rubric grids – from math homework to 5th grade creative dance!
C3 Teachers framework [.pdf]
See standards under “Geography,” possibly “Economy” if you address resource extraction.
There is a longer book for purchase on this Framework, and I’ve inquired about a digital copy. The above resource should be enough to do a first-pass at alignment.