As a high school science educator at Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe school,  indigenous culture and teachings are incorporated into my instruction as much as possible. This text set was incorporated in my Astronomy class tying in Ojibwe Moons and seasonal constellations with northern Wisconsin phenology. A discussion of text set implementation is also included in this OER.Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe School is a Bureau of Indian Education/Tribally controlled school catering to students who are themselves tribally enrolled or descendants of a tribal member.

Through ongoing partnership with teachers across New York City, New Visions has developed this course map for a high school earth & space science course fully designed to the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and the New York State Science Learning Standards (NYSSLS). Each unit follows a common structure: students engage with an anchor phenomenon and develop questions; go through sequences of learning and sense-making to develop and iterate on answers to those questions; then complete a three-dimensional performance task.

Unit 1: Discovering New Worlds Topic: Solar System
Unit 2: Probability of Life in the Universe Topic: Early Solar System, Orbital Motion, and Origin of the Universe
Unit 3: Earthquakes and Tsunamis: Are we at Risk? Topic: Earth’s Interior_ Waves, Energy and Risk
Unit 4: Climate Change Throughout Human History Topic: Coevolution of Climate and Life
Unit 5: Human Decision Making Topic: Human Sustainability
Unit 6: More Hurricanes and Blizzards in NYC? Topic: Climate Change and Severe Weather

Take a journey through the observable universe and back in time in this video by the California Academy of Sciences. Use this resource to stimulate thinking about the immense scale of the universe and Earth’s place in it and to visualize how the light from distant objects represents objects and events from the past, allowing us to peer into the ancient universe.