This unit is focused on two classic fairy tales: The Three Little Pigs and Little Red Riding Hood. With each fairy tale, students are first exposed to a classic version, familiarizing themselves with the basic plot and lessons. Then students explore the ways authors change setting, characters, and plot while still maintaining the overall essence of the classic story. Some of the changes the authors make reflect the nuances of different cultures and environments, while others are made for entertainment and humor. Either way, students will explore the idea that different authors can use their own perspective and culture to shape the stories they write or retell. By reading multiple versions of the same classic fairy tale, students will also be able to grapple with the bigger lessons of each tale—the importance of not talking to strangers and the importance of respecting others’ property and privacy. Over the course of the unit, students will be challenged to think about how each of these unique themes is portrayed and how in each different version of the fairy tale the characters may learn the lesson in slightly different ways. It is our hope that this unit, in connection with others in the sequence, will help students see the power of storytelling and how simple stories can be changed and improved based on an author’s ideas and preferences.

In this unit, students explore the concepts of fairness and justice by learning about many of the equal rights movements that have happened in the United States. Over the course of the unit, students study the fight for women’s rights, the civil rights movement, the fight for labor and workers’ rights, the LGBTQ+ movement, the disability rights movement, and the Indigenous Water Protectors movement. With each movement, students read biographies of people who are not in positions of power and analyze how they were able to fight for justice, equity, and change. This unit builds on work done in Kindergarten Unit 6, “What is Justice?” and pushes students to build a deeper understanding of discrimination, justice, and action beyond just the civil rights movement.

In this unit, students explore ancient Egypt. Over the course of the unit, students learn and explore different characteristics of ancient Egypt and what the ancient Egyptians valued. Through learning about the daily routines, structures, and rituals of ancient Egypt, students will be challenged to draw conclusions about what the civilization valued and how those values compare to society today. Students will also learn about the role that mummies and pyramids played in ancient Egyptian society and why archeologists and scientists have been intrigued by them ever since. It is our hope that this unit, in conjunction with the others in the sequence, will help students understand and appreciate early civilizations that have had a lasting impact on the world.

In this unit, students explore the power of books and reading. In the first part of the unit, students experience the joy that books and reading bring to people's lives, and learn about some of the different ways people access books, especially in places where books are hard to get. In the second part of the unit, students learn about a range of barriers people have faced when trying to learn how to read, both in the United States and around the world, and build an understanding of the steps people have taken individually and as part of a community to overcome the barriers. Students will discover that not all people have had equal access to education and that in many places, past and present, receiving a high-quality education has not been an easy feat. It is our hope that this unit will help open students' eyes to injustices connected with educational access and will inspire students to take action to help members of their community get access to books or education.

In this first unit of second grade, students read multiple versions of a classic fairy tale, Cinderella. Through reading various versions of the same story, students are not only exposed to a wide variety of cultures, but they are also challenged to think about how the culture, or setting, of the story influences the plot. In 1st grade Literature, students took a trip around the world, exploring a wide variety of themes and stories from all over in order to build a foundational understanding that our world is made up of many diverse and unique cultures. This unit builds on the exposure to new cultures students received in 1st grade and provides an opportunity for students to explore the idea that even though cultures may appear to be different, there are many things embedded within the unique characteristics of different cultures that make them similar. Storytelling, and the role of storytelling, is one of those similarities. It is our hope that this unit, in connection with others in the sequence, helps students build empathy and understanding of people and cultures that might be different from them.

Bring the vocabulary of film to life through the processes of filmmaking. Students learn terminology and techniques simultaneously as they plan, film, and edit a short video.

This unit on American Indians: By studying the regions of the United States and the cultures that live in each region, students are able to compare/contrast within regions and across regions how tribes used their environments, and their cultural and other contributions to American life.

Note that the emphasis here is on broader groups of tribes for each region with some instruction on specific tribes representing each region. In no way is this case study approach to learning about one tribe meant to be generalized to all tribes of that region. We understand that each tribe was and continues to be unique in its culture, practices, lifeways, and traditions.

This unit includes a combination of fourth grade writing and social studies standards. It focuses on research and public discourse.

In this unit, students learn to find areas of polygons by decomposing, rearranging, and composing shapes. They learn to understand and use the terms “base” and “height,” and find areas of parallelograms and triangles. Students approximate areas of non-polygonal regions by polygonal regions. They represent polyhedra with nets and find their surface areas.

How does a one-way mirror work? Though most everyone knows that one-way mirrors exist, having students model how they work turns out to be a very effective way to develop their thinking about how visible light travels and how we see images. Initial student models reveal a wide variety of ideas and explanations that motivate the unit investigations that help students figure out what is going on and lead them to a deeper understanding of the world around them.

As the first unit in the OpenSciEd program, during the course of this unit, students also develop the foundation for classroom norms for collaboration that will be important across the whole program.

The goals of OpenSciEd are to ensure any science teacher, anywhere, can access and download freely available, high quality, locally adaptable full-course materials. REMOTE LEARNING GUIDE FOR THIS UNIT NOW AVAILABLE!

This unit on weather, climate, and water cycling is broken into four separate lesson sets. In the first two lesson sets, students explain small-scale storms. In the third and fourth lesson sets, students explain mesoscale weather systems and climate-level patterns of precipitation. Each of these two parts of the unit is grounded in a different anchoring phenomenon.

This unit on weather, climate, and water cycling is broken into four separate lesson sets. In the first two lesson sets, students explain small-scale storms. In the third and fourth lesson sets, students explain mesoscale weather systems and climate-level patterns of precipitation. Each of these two parts of the unit is grounded in a different anchoring phenomenon.

Students will learn the components of an informational essay. Through modeling, mini-lessons and multiple opportunities for practice and feedback, students will go through the writing process to produce an informational essay on the topic of their choice.

This unit addresses four 6th grade reading standards taught throughout the course of a trimester. These lessons are designed to be taught one day a week, while the other days in the trimester are focused on writing units. This unit is designed to be co-taught with a general education and special education teacher, but can be easily adapted if only one teacher is present.

In this part of the unit, students are exploring how global temperatures have changed over the past hundred years.  Students will examine tables and graphs about global temperatures and carbon dioxide levels, human consumption of food, and human consumption of natural resources.  They will find patterns in the graphs.  Based on this data, students will construct an argument about how human activities (increase in population and consumption of natural resources) cause global temperatures to increase.

Students will learn the components of a Narrative writing. Through mini-lessons (Ex: dialogue, story elements, figurative language, good introductions,genre study,  etc.),  daily writing and revising, students will go through the writing process to produce a narrative writing on a topic of their choice.

To pique students’ curiosity and anchor the learning for the unit in the visible and concrete, students start with an experience of observing and analyzing a bath bomb as it fizzes and eventually disappears in the water. Their observations and questions about what is going on drive learning that digs into a series of related phenomena as students iterate and improve their models depicting what happens during chemical reactions. By the end of the unit, students have a firm grasp on how to model simple molecules, know what to look for to determine if chemical reactions have occurred, and apply their knowledge to chemical reactions to show how mass is conserved when atoms are rearranged.

This unit on metabolic reactions in the human body starts out with students exploring a real case study of a middle-school girl named M’Kenna, who reported some alarming symptoms to her doctor. Her symptoms included an inability to concentrate, headaches, stomach issues when she eats, and a lack of energy for everyday activities and sports that she used to play regularly. She also reported noticeable weight loss over the past few months, in spite of consuming what appeared to be a healthy diet. Her case sparks questions and ideas for investigations around trying to figure out which pathways and processes in M’Kenna’s body might be functioning differently than a healthy system and why.

Students investigate data specific to M’Kenna’s case in the form of doctor’s notes, endoscopy images and reports, growth charts, and micrographs. They also draw from their results from laboratory experiments on the chemical changes involving the processing of food and from digital interactives to explore how food is transported, transformed, stored, and used across different body systems in all people. Through this work of figuring out what is causing M’Kenna’s symptoms, the class discovers what happens to the food we eat after it enters our bodies and how M’Kenna’s different symptoms are connected.