By Holly Steele

Looking for NGSS-aligned units that go beyond traditional science curriculum? Want to help students make sense of phenomena like wildfires, extreme heat, flooding — and empower them to design solutions?

Seeds to Solutions is a set of free, high-quality K–12 instructional resources with everything you need to teach an age-appropriate, empowering unit on solutions to climate change. Produced by the San Mateo County Office of Education, environmental literacy nonprofit Ten Strands, and teams of educators and climate experts, Seeds to Solutions instructional materials prepare students to be environmentally literate, engaged community members.

If you missed us at the CASE Conference in October, attendees got to experience the Grade 5 unit: How can Californians use fire responsibly to prevent destructive wildfires? We learned how to use the storyline instructional model to facilitate student inquiry and develop explanatory models to help students show and grow their thinking. Each unit culminates with students designing a solution to the environmental challenge they learned about, which teachers can scale up or down to meet their needs.

Each unit comes with a teacher guide, lesson content, and student materials, is aligned with NGSS and CCSS, and is 100 percent free thanks to funding from the California Department of Education.

Download any unit for free by visiting the links below and selecting “Download This Unit.” You can also sign up for the newsletter to get notified about unit updates and professional learning. Interested in learning more? Contact Holly Steele at hsteele@tenstrands.org. 

• Kindergarten: Observing Our Natural World – How do we explore and make choices about the world around us?
• 1st Grade: Food Systems – How does the food we throw away impact our community, and how can we throw away less food?
• 2nd Grade: Open Space – Why is open space important?
• 3rd Grade: Extreme Temperatures – What impact does extreme heat have in California, and what can we do about it?
• 4th Grade: Power Outages and Energy Systems – Why are weather-related power outages happening more often in California?
• 5th Grade: Wildfires – How can Californians use fire responsibly to prevent destructive wildfires?
• 6th Grade: Food Systems – How does a changing climate impact our food, and what can we do about it?
• 7th Grade: Land Subsidence and Groundwater – Why is the Central Valley sinking and what can we do about it?      
• 8th Grade: Air Quality – What affects the air quality in the San Bernardino-Riverside area, and what can we do about it?
• 9th-10th Grade Life and Environmental Science: Managing Water for California Communities and Ecosystems – How can we manage water for California communities and ecosystems in a changing climate?
• 9th-10th Grade Physical and Environmental Science: Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Consumerism – How does our stuff impact climate change?
• 11th Grade Interdisciplinary Environmental Science: Engaging in Research – Why does environmental injustice persist, and what can we do about it?
• 12th Grade Interdisciplinary Environmental Science: Conducting Case Studies – How does bringing together different types of knowledge make an effective case for environmental justice?

Seeds to Solutions empowers students to investigate environmental challenges and become solution seekers. NGSS-aligned units for grades K–12 are available free of charge thanks to funding from the California Department of Education.

Tags