What the curriculum does well…

• The unit is organized around explaining a real-life, historic event in the state of Washington – why the town of Moncton flooded after a dam was built on the opposite side of a nearby mountain. It is an event that had major consequences for people living in the town of Moncton at the time, and that continues to have resonances today in terms of the sets of considerations and potential unintended impacts of environmental engineering decisions. 
• A lesson specifically focuses on the history of the land and the people who have interacted with it over time, beginning with the First People.
• The phenomenon and unit activities provide shared experiences and likely tap into common experiences young students have had with water and how it moves through different materials, making key ideas accessible. Students’ personal experiences are also continually valued as meaningful sources of evidence.
• Students are introduced to the concept of watersheds and how their choices can impact water quality and the health of systems downstream. They have opportunities to connect their learning to observations of and potential actions with storm drains around their school.
• The curriculum includes numerous examples of discussion norms and ground rules to support equity and justice in participation.
• Sentence stems provide support for particular forms of language use (like using evidence to support claims).
• Lessons regularly and intentionally integrate storytelling and work with maps with STEM, expanding cultural relevance and engagement.

What needs to be done to be justice-focused… 

• • Currently, the service learning project is positioned as an extension, but this project could be made more central and students could collectively take action on a current related issue, or teach their community this story and its lessons.
  • Students could have a deliberation session from the viewpoints of multiple stakeholders deciding what to do in terms of building the dam. Students could take the perspective of water, plants, animals, or townspeople, and discuss alternative solutions.
  • The model scaffold could be edited or expanded to include the sociohistorical aspects of the phenomenon (not just why the town was flooded, but why the dam was built).
  • This unit is deeply situated in the state of Washington and a specific watershed and set of geologic formations and may benefit from being adapted and connected as possible to local water systems (e.g., Investigation 2 may instead be situated in your state).

These critiques are starting places. Adapt tools and resources within this unit, please add or change activities based on ideas your students bring up in class, and critique our critiques!

Science & Children article (Shim et al., 2018): Read more about how “Agree/Disagree T-charts” provided meaningful through-lines as Kitten’s second-grade class developed evidence-based arguments over the course of this unit.

If you are using this curriculum as a part of professional learning or teacher education, here are a few considerations:

Equity Questions for Teacher Reflection

• What social and emotional learning environment components are in place in the classroom to ensure that all learners can feel comfortable and safe sharing their ideas in front of their teacher and peers?
• This unit includes numerous earth materials investigations. How do you maintain a sense of “order” while also balancing the need for students to have room to “experience” the experiments in a developmentally appropriate manner?
• How to engage students in a discussion about culturally sensitive and sometimes tension-filled topics while also not glossing over history?

Resources

• Primer Creating Agree_Disagree T-Charts
• Primer Facilitating Agree_Disagree Discussions
• Primer Facilitating Synthesis Discussion

• Science & Children article (Shim et al., 2018): Read more about how “Agree/Disagree T-charts” provided meaningful through-lines as Kitten’s second-grade class developed evidence-based arguments over the course of this unit.

NGSS

• 2-ESS1-1. Use information from several sources to provide evidence that Earth events can occur quickly or slowly. [Clarification Statement: Examples of events and timescales could include volcanic explosions and earthquakes, which happen quickly and erosion of rocks, which occurs slowly.] [Assessment Boundary: Assessment does not include quantitative measurements of timescales.]