Unit Plan — Exemplar Collection

Exemplar Type: UNIT
Title: Science and Service Learning
Grades: 3-5
Discipline: Science
Submitted By: Eileen Merritt

Science and Service Learning

We believe that high quality service-learning instruction engages and motivates students and teaches important science concepts and collaborative skills. Students who participate in service-learning gain the knowledge, attitudes and skills needed to become an engaged citizen and solve environmental challenges that lie ahead. We strive to support teachers' science instruction, boost students’ collaborative skills, and spark students’ interest in future civic work.

Participants will explore the topics of energy and natural resources in depth, and try new ways of engaging their students in science that align with the three dimensions of the Next Generation Science Standards. Participants will model and teach students the collaborative skills needed to work together to impact authentic problems in their community. Participants will facilitate a high quality service-learning project with their students.

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BENCHMARKS REPRESENTED IN THIS EXEMPLAR

Big Ideas

Humans are dependent on Earth’s life-support systems
We are all in this together: We are interdependent on each other and on the natural systems
The changes to the Earth’s surface environments made by human activity are causing unintended consequences on the health and well-being of human and other life on Earth (proposed Anthropocene Epoch)
Sustain-ability requires individual and social learning and community practice

Higher Order Thinking Skills

Anticipatory: Futures Thinking
Complex: Critical Thinking
Mindful: Reflective Thinking

Applied Knowledge and Actions

Inventing The Future
Responsible Local and Global Citizenship
Multiple Perspectives

Dispositions

Caring
Respectful
Responsible

Applications and Actions

Create Social Learning Communities
Honor the specific knowledge and skills that each person and culture brings
Ask different questions and actively listen for the answer
Empower people and groups
Envision, strategize and plan
Treat others with respect and dignity
Listen to one another

Community Connections

Consider and prepare for a range of potential future scenarios, while charting a course toward the preferred future
Students and teachers make authentic contributions to sustainable community development through service learning opportunities, project-based and place based learning opportunities for students that are laterally and vertically embedded in the core curriculum
School buildings and grounds serve the whole community as learning hubs for continuing education of individuals as well as school and community stakeholders to learn together for the future they want

Exemplar Type: Unit Plan
Title: Place Based Ed Unit Planning Sheet
Grades: 6 - 8
Discipline: Science
Submitted By: Chris Wyland
Affiliation: Cottonwood School of Civics and Science

Animal and Environment Interdependence: Ecosystem Survey

Students perform an ecosystem survey of a local wildlife refuge before a major change is implemented to the ecosystem. The reservoir in the ecosystem will change from 30 acres to 10 acres effectively becoming 1⁄3 the size. See the letter from Portland Parks and Recreation to understand more about the situation. This will happen as a result of replacing a smaller culvert with a much larger one. The local Audubon society voiced concerns on the impact on waterfowl. The intention of the change is to increase biodiversity of the refuge by increasing the size of a culvert that connects this ecosystem to the larger river ecosystem it was separated from 50 years prior by a railway. This culvert is large enough for salmon to stop off for reading on their annual run, deer and larger mammals to swim through etc.This project has been 10 years in the making. The data generated by the first student group will provide a based line of where the ecosystem is at before the project. A later student group will come back and look at where the ecosystem is at after the change.

History of changes to this area:
- Used by First Peoples the area to grow crops (very fertile)
- Railroad installed: Cuts the ecosystem off from the large river ecosystem
- Used as a landfill
- Invasive species overtook the area
- Covered over and converted to wildlife refuge: Restoration work began

Final Product is a presentation displaying the data and findings where the students draw hypotheses about the impacts of the change.

Unit Planning Sheet

Project Background

Board Presentation

For the third episode in a three-part series on place-based education in science, we welcome Chris Wyland to the show. Chris is a middle school math and science teacher at the Cottonwood School of Civics and Science in Portland, where the focus of the entire school is encouraging exploration of the natural world and involvement in the local community through the arts and sciences. Continuing our discussion of place-based education in science, Chris joins us to explain this approach in an ecology unit where his middle school students are partnering with the Portland Parks and Recreation Department to apply their scientific knowledge in fieldwork that benefits their local community.

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