In this unit students explore immigration by reading a series of narrative nonfiction and fiction texts that highlight the experiences of early and recent immigrants. In the first part of the unit students are pushed to notice and think about the different reasons people choose to leave their homes and settle in a new community or country. Students will then be pushed to think about the different memories, cultural traits, goods, ideas, languages, and skills that individuals and families bring with them when they move to a new place and how these characteristics enrich the community. While students are exposed to a wide variety of immigrant experiences over the course of the unit, not every experience or feeling about immigration is captured in this unit. Because many of our students are first- or second-generation immigrants, it is crucial to be sensitive to and respect the varying experiences and feelings of our students and families. It is our hope that this unit, in connection with others, will help students build sensitivity and empathy for varying cultures and experiences within the United States.

In this unit, students study the rovers Spirit and Opportunity and their remarkable missions to Mars. Through a combination of reading, analyzing images and photographs, and participating in engineering and design labs, students will begin to understand the complexity, preparation, and diligence involved in space missions. Students will grapple with why the engineering and design process, particularly continually planning, trying, and evaluating, is a crucial part of a successful mission. This unit also allows students to make connections between content learned in math and content learned in previous science units, solidifying the importance and value of STEM. It is our hope that this unit inspires students to explore engineering and STEM not only in space but in the world around them.

In this unit, students build their skills in consuming scientific and technical texts. Students will practice explaining the connection between two or more scientific ideas or concepts in a text. Additionally, students will be challenged to draw on and integrate information from two or more texts in order to describe a scientific idea, concept, or process in depth. This unit also continues the study of point of view and analyzing how the point of view influences what and how information is presented to a reader. The Mighty Mars Rover is written to captivate and engage a reader, while the NASA press releases are written to inform the public of the progress and findings of the Mars rover missions. Students will be challenged to compare and contrast the point of view of each text and the strategies each author uses based on the point of view and desired audience. Since this is the culminating unit of the course, all other informational standards will be spiraled throughout the unit.

Students explore the methods engineers have devised for harnessing sunlight to generate power. First, they investigate heat transfer and heat storage through the construction, testing and use of a solar oven. With a lesson focused on photovoltaic cells, students learn the concepts of energy conversion, conservation of energy, current and voltage. By constructing model solar powered cars, students see these conceptual ideas manifested in modern technology. Furthermore, the solar car project provides opportunities to explore a number of other topics, such as gear ratios and simple mechanics. Both of these design and construction projects are examples of engineering design.

Writing gets personal when students interview family members in order to write a personal narrative about that person.

Students create a Detective's Handbook based on a detective mystery they have read. The handbooks include expository and descriptive writing, as well as a letter.

Students will explore five different "Discovery Buckets". These buckets will give them opportunities to practice expressing both their thoughts and feelings. Main Curriculum Tie: English Language Arts Kindergarten Speaking and Listening Standard 6, Speak audibly and express thoughts, feelings, and ideas clearly. We recognize that an increased ability to communicate thoughts and feelings gives children the skills they need in their interactions with others. Acceptance by peers is not only correlated with positive attitudes toward school; it is a powerful predictor of social adjustment throughout life. This lesson helps children understand their emotions and how to appropriately express thoughts and feelings with others.

Picture books provide the basis for an analysis of fairy tale elements before students write their own original tales.

After reading a short memoir and reviewing the genre, students choose how to create a memoir of a family member who is at least a generation older. Students first select a family member to interview, and then craft a set of interview. Students create written memoirs, focusing on one or two unifying themes, and can be presented as a photographic collage, a series of panels telling a story, a painting, a video, a musical composition, a sculpture, or another creative way. Students accompany their work with an artist̍s journal, explaining why they have chosen the particular method of presentation and analyzing their own successes and shortcomings.

Explore the evolving division of duties and powers between the federal and state governments throughout the eras of federalism using an interactive timeline and associated resources.

What can American landscapes and other paintings tell us about the evolution of democracy in the United States? This portion of the Land and Landscape module focuses on the influence of land ownership and the evolution of American civic ideas through landscape.

All of us have felt sick at some point in our lives. Many times, we find ourselves asking, "What is the quickest way that I can start to feel better?" During this two-lesson unit, students study that question and determine which form of medicine delivery (pill, liquid, injection/shot) offers the fastest relief. This challenge question serves as a real-world context for learning all about flow rates. Students study how long various prescription methods take to introduce chemicals into our blood streams, as well as use flow rate to determine how increasing a person's heart rate can theoretically make medicines work more quickly. Students are introduced to engineering devices that simulate what occurs during the distribution of antibiotic cells in the body.

Social injustice occurs every day all over the world. In this lesson, students research a few historical examples of social injustice, including the Holocaust, the Trail of Tears, and Japanese internment.

In this unit students begin to explore the concepts of fairness and justice. Over the course of the unit students are exposed to numerous ordinary people who worked together to overcome injustice and fight for a better future for others. Students will grapple with what it means if something is fair and just, particularly in regard to race, class, gender, and ability. Then students will be challenged to think about the different ways in which people showed courage, patience, and perseverance in order to challenge things that were fundamentally unfair. Over the course of the unit it is our hope that students are able to acknowledge and realize that things aren't always fair in the world around them, but that doesn't mean that it always has to be that way. It is our hope that students see that identifying the problem is only the first step and that anyone who has the right mindset and beliefs can inspire others to work together to create a more just future for everyone. Essentially, we hope that this unit begins to plant the seed within our students that they can be activists and take charge of their own lives and communities. No one is too young to inspire change. It is important to note that this unit primarily focuses on big-scale changes. Additional projects and lessons should be added to help students understand how what they learned connects to change on a smaller scale. In reading, students will continue to work on developing their informational reading strategies, particularly when reading a collection of narrative nonfiction texts. The focus of this unit is on reinforcing and practicing targeted informational strategies in the context of a narrative structure. In particular, students will be pushed to describe the connection between individuals, events, and pieces of information. Students will also be challenged to think about the reasons an author gives to support a point and how those reasons look slightly different in a narrative informational text than in a scientific or history-based informational text. In writing, students will continue to work on writing responses to the text that provide relevant and accurate information along with some evidence of inferential or critical thinking.

In this unit students study the Civil Rights Movement through the eyes of the youth and children who experienced the struggles, hardships, victories, defeats, and possibilities firsthand. Students will be challenged to analyze the key characteristics shared by children who participated in the Civil Rights Movement, particularly their courage, commitment, bravery, and unending commitment to fighting for the cause. Over the course of the unit students will realize that through community organizing and a strong desire for justice, regular people, especially youth, were able to come together to use a variety of nonviolent tactics to fight for change, even when faced with resistance, oppression, and violence on a daily basis. The stories and experiences in the unit will highlight that the Civil Rights Movement was driven by the heroism of regular people and that anyone can participate in the fight against injustice. It is our hope that this unit, in conjunction with other units from the sequence, will empower students to notice and challenge the injustices, relying on their knowledge of history and the lessons they’ve learned from those who have fought before them.

In this unit students refine their skills as critical consumers of texts by analyzing the point of view from which a text is written and noticing how the point of view influences what and how information is presented to a reader. Students will read multiple accounts of the same topic or event and be challenged to notice the similarities and differences in the points of view they represent and how the author uses evidence and reasons to support a particular point of view. Photographs are an important part of the texts in the unit. Students will be pushed to analyze photographs as a source of information to support an author’s point. Students will also continue to practice determining one or more main ideas of a text and explaining how they are supported by key details, summarizing a text, and explaining the relationship between one or more events or individuals in a historical text. Over the course of the unit students will also be required to access information from multiple sources in order to integrate information and draw conclusions about an event or topic.

Using various reading strategies and resources, students explore the issue of food waste. They also create persuasive arguments and blog posts examining this topic.

Students will be involved in a group research of "How to" books and videos.  Then, they will create their own "How to" writing using See Saw as their on-line creation "house".  Students will work in collaborative groups during the entire process and learn how to complete the task as a team.  Students will be given daily feedback from their teacher as well as final peer and teacher feedback.

Students enter our classrooms with their own background experiences and knowledge, this unit allows them to dig deeper in one area of expertise to teach the reader "How To" perform a task.

Students are introduced to the important concept of density with a focus is on the more easily understood densities of solids. Students use different methods to determine the densities of solid objects, including water displacement to determine volumes of irregularly-shaped objects. By comparing densities of various solids to the density of water, and by considering the behavior of different solids when placed in water, students conclude that ordinarily, objects with densities greater than water sink, while those with densities less than water float. Then they explore the principle of buoyancy, and through further experimentation arrive at Archimedes' principle that a floating object displaces a mass of water equal to its own mass. Students may be surprised to discover that a floating object displaces more water than a sinking object of the same volume.

Students read literary and informational texts about knowledge and intelligence to understand what happens when humans try to manipulate the minds of others and how our understanding of intelligence has evolved over time. Students express their understanding of these ideas by exploring how authors draw on traditional stories and develop characters and themes to teach us about ourselves and others.

This online lesson provides perspectives from Native American community members, images, objects, and other sources to help students and teachers understand the efforts of Native Nations of the Pacific Northwest to protect and sustain salmon, water, and homelands. Scroll to begin an exploration of the Pacific Northwest history and cultures.