Initial Publication Date: February 1, 2013

How to use the Blueprints

There are many ways to construct a high school Earth Science class. These DIG Texas blueprints provide a year-long roadmap or a pathway for educators to follow as they teach a one-year high school Earth Science course (approximately 30 weeks). We invite teachers to use each one as is, or assemble a about nine different units to create a blueprint that is tailored for their own course. Teachers may use the blueprints as the inspiration to create their own blueprints.

Audience

Designed for high school Earth Science classes, this site is also appropriate for two-year college and undergraduate Earth Science courses.

Organization

Blueprints organize units in a coherent framework for teachers to follow as they teach. Each unit has links to pre-existing, carefully reviewed learning experiences and other educational resources. Selected resources constitute a manageable number of resources for students to use over a three-week time frame and are packaged in a way that facilitates their use. Learning experiences included in the units have links to background preparatory materials, additional hands-on resources, teaching tips, and, in some cases, cross-curricular connections. For example, a learning experience on the formation of our universe may have links to myths and legends about its origin and evolution. In addition to the learning experiences, the units contain visualizations, animations or videos and a list of suggested readings, podcasts or tutorials. These are intended to provide the context for the learning experiences.

Standards Alignment

The learning experiences in each unit were purposefully chosen to align with the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) Earth Science Performance Expectations (PEs). The PEs require that "... students operate at the intersection of practice, content and connection" (NGSS Lead States, 2013). Therefore, the PEs integrate specific Science and Engineering Practices (practice), Disciplinary Core Ideas (content) and Cross Cutting Concepts (connection). In order for students to achieve a particular PE, they need to engage in several different Science and Engineering Practices (SEPs) to develop their understanding of a Disciplinary Core Idea (DCI). PEs provide guidance to teachers on what students should be able to do at the end of instruction for each blueprint unit. They are not designed to describe what students are doing during instruction and how teachers should teach the material.

The NGSS have identified the most important material for students to know and do. We have included additional educational resources in order to ensure that the blueprints are aligned with the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills for Earth and Space Science and the Earth Science Literacy Principles http://www.earthscienceliteracy.org. A blueprint does not attempt to cover all of Earth Science; instead it takes an in-depth look at key topics that are critical for understanding the challenges that humans face in living on this "restless planet."

References

NGSS Lead States, 2013, Next Generation Science Standards, For States, By States, Washington DC: The National Academies Press.

How to use the Units

Blueprint units provide curriculum and resources for use with students

Each unit follows a storyline. Labs, learning experiences, readings, videos, and other educational resources are organized within an individual unit to support the storyline.

Teachers must develop their own individual plan for how they will teach a unit. Therefore, it is extremely important to allocate time to review all the activities and background material prior to using the learning experiences in this unit and to probe students for their prior knowledge before starting an activity. There are "Scaffolding Notes" for each unit to facilitate implementation.

The learning experiences selected provide links to excellent background preparatory materials, additional hands-on resources, teaching tips, and cross-curricular connections. Visualizations, animations or videos and suggested readings, podcasts or tutorials are included to provide the context for the learning activities. However, teachers may wish to create their own PowerPoint/Prezi presentations, deliver lectures and assign other ancillary work (readings, etc.) to their students, in order to set the stage for effective use and implementation of each unit's learning activities. In addition, although some activities may incorporate assessments, teachers may need to create their own assessments to ensure that they are appropriate for the students they teach.

Teacher Expectations

  1. Educators must develop their own individual plan for how they will teach a selected blueprint.
  2. Educators are expected to provide the necessary instruction required to prepare students to use educational resources in the units that comprise the blueprint. Therefore, it is extremely important to allocate time to review all the activities and background material prior to using the learning experiences and to probe students for their prior knowledge before starting to teach a unit.
  3. Educators should supply their own PowerPoint/Prezi presentations, deliver lectures and assign ancillary work (readings, etc.) to their students in order to set the stage for effective use of the learning experiences.
  4. Although some activities may incorporate assessments, teachers will need to create their own assessments for each unit

Terms of Use

This website was developed by the Science Education Resource Center (SERC) at Carleton College and its partners with funding from the National Science Foundation and other sponsors. Any views expressed in this website do not necessarily reflect the views of SERC, Carleton College or any of its sponsors or affiliates.

Citing this Site

A number of useful citation formats for web resources can be found here. In general you should include author, publication date, page title, title of the site, date you viewed the site, and the url. A citation of the DIG Texas Instructional Blueprint resource might look like this:

Ellins, K.K., Riggs, E.M, Serpa, L., Pennington, D., Stocks, E.S., and the DIG Texas Instructional Blueprint Development Team (2015), Dig Texas Instructional Blueprint: Songs of a Distant Earth, Retrieved April 6, 2015, from http://serc.carleton.edu/dig_blueprints/.

Please feel free to contact us for more detailed authorship information.

Our pages list the last modification date (effectively the publication date of the current page content) in the page footer. The page title can be found across the top of your web browser and the site title usually appears in the banner across the top of the page.

Copyright

We encourage the reuse and dissemination of the material on this site for noncommercial educational purposes in which no fees are charged for use of this resource as long as attribution is retained. To this end the material on this site, unless otherwise noted, is offered under a Creative Commons license Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0. Attribution should include at a minimum a link to the original material on the SERC site and credit to the original authors (see above for determining that information). In most cases including all the information in the citation format above is preferred.

If you are interested in using the DIG Texas Instructional Blueprints, individual blueprint units and materials found on the DIG Texas site beyond the scope of this license (e.g. for commercial use or within materials you will offer for sale), please contact serc@carleton.edu and/or kellins@jsg.utexas.edu.

Examples of uses for which additional permission is required are:

      • Reuse in course pack/ classroom materials for which a fee is charged
      • Reuse in training such as teacher professional development for which participants are charged a fee
      • Posting on a university/ college/ school classroom course management system.

Unless other arrangements are in place authors of original works submitted to SERC retain their copyright. But in volunteering the works they agree to offer it under this license allowing for reuse and redistribution with attribution. Authors are responsible for obtaining copyright permission for all materials that they distribute within their work.

If you believe that specific material on SERC sites has been posted in violation of copyright Carleton College has registered an agent for notification of claims of copyright infringement pursuant to Section 512(c) of the Copyright Act. Claims of copyright infringement.