Susan DeBari: Using Interactions between Water, Earth's Surface, and Human Activity in Geology and Everyday Thinking (GET) at Western Washington University part of Interactions between Water, Earth’s Surface, and Human Activity
This course (GET) is an introduction to geology designed specifically for pre-service elementary teachers. It is constructivist by design, so that learning occurs through a series of guided activities, and focused small- and large-group discussion. Students work in groups of three at all times. It is through the student-led (but facilitated) sense-making discussions that concepts are developed. Concepts build through seven modules over the course of the quarter, so that by the end, students have a very holistic view of how energy and matter are transferred through Earth processes.

An Intentional Media Diet part of Curriculum for the Bioregion:Courses
It's not just that we are what we eat, it's that we are what we consume. In the same way that the food we eat becomes our bodies, the media to which we pay attention, and the conversations in which we ...

Rebecca Teed: Using Changing Biosphere in Concepts in Earth Science for Middle-Childhood Educators II at Wright State University-Main Campus part of Changing Biosphere
Earth Systems for Pre-service Science Teachers My students are preparing to teach science themselves, and are expected to learn through inquiry. This course is intended to address a number of major themes in middle-grades science standards, and to emphasize approaches and topics that are especially challenging, like systems thinking and Earth history. This module offers an important hook for Earth history: the current mass extinction resulting from multiple modern ecological crises including climate change, invasive species, and habitat destruction. Systems thinking is vital to understanding the chains of cause and effect that drive both ancient and modern mass extinctions. My students were very interested in the similarities between ancient and modern disasters.