Making Butter. This is the Lesson 3 Digging Deeper activity, from Unit 6 Food Products and Processing, from the DIGS (Developing Individuals, Growing Stewards) AmeriCorps Curriculum from CSU. The curriculum focuses on introducing students in grades 3-5 to Colorado agriculture, industry and environmental issues. The curriculum upon request. Visit: https://engagement.colostate.edu/programs-old/developing-individuals-growing-stewards/

Students will interact with a mystery box with "mystery internal contents." Through a general inquiry process, they will attempt to determine it's contents without seeing the materials. The general steps are below:

1) Generate ideas with the mystery box
2) Share out ideas in a Poster Session/Gallery Walk
3) Recreate your box with limited materials
4) Discuss how this represents geologic ways of thinking

Metacognitive components of the activity
There are multiple opportunities for student reflection throughout the activity in order to reflect on their learning and their confidence level.
Metacognitive goals for this activity:
Assist students in connecting their own ways of thinking (habits of mind) with those of a geoscientist.
Assessing students' metacognition
Students who actively engage with content are more likely to be able to visualize the content goals and reflection is an important way for students to clarify their own meaning making process.

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Marshmallow Pig. This is the Lesson 3 Digging Deeper activity, from Unit 8 Animal Systems, from the DIGS (Developing Individuals, Growing Stewards) AmeriCorps Curriculum from CSU. The curriculum focuses on introducing students in grades 3-5 to Colorado agriculture, industry and environmental issues.The curriculum is matched to State Standards 2021. The curriculum upon request. Visit: https://engagement.colostate.edu/programs-old/developing-individuals-growing-stewards/

This Read & Seed lesson will focus on practicing mindfulness in a fun and nature centered way. We will read A Quiet Place by Douglas Wood and Dan Andreasen, and create our own mindfulness wands. Participate in a Movement/Music/Finger Play activity by practicing some garden yoga. This lesson is aimed at connecting young learners to their natural world and promote school readiness skills. This Read & Seed activity is presented by The Gardens on Spring Creek by the City of Fort Collins. https://youtu.be/MTczG8WcGXg

This Read & Seed lesson will focus on practicing mindfulness in a fun and nature centered way. We will read A Quiet Place by Douglas Wood and Dan Andreasen, and create our own mindfulness wands. Participate in a Movement/Music/Finger Play activity by practicing some garden yoga. This lesson is aimed at connecting young learners to their natural world and promote school readiness skills. This Read & Seed activity is presented by The Gardens on Spring Creek by the City of Fort Collins. https://www.fcgov.com/gardens/files/read-seed-website-mindfulness-in-the-gardens.pdf?1589213978

Museums of Western Colorado allow education kits for check out in District 51. The kits come with a curriculum, teacher training materials and artifacts. Some of which are genuine from the Grand Junction BLM Field Office. Kits local to the Grand Junction/Western Colorado area.

Through two lessons and four activities, students learn about nanotechnology, its extreme smallness, and its vast and growing applications in our world. Embedded within the unit is a broader introduction to the field of material science and engineering and its vital role in nanotechnology advancement. Engaging mini-lab activities on ferrofluids, quantum dots and gold nanoparticles introduce students to specific fields within nanoscience and help them understand key concepts as the basis for thinking about engineering and everyday applications that use next-generation technology nanotechnology.

Natural Resources Superheroes. This is the Lesson 2 Understanding Colorado Agriculture activity from Unit 3 Natural Resources, from the DIGS (Developing Individuals, Growing Stewards) AmeriCorps Curriculum from CSU. The curriculum focuses on introducing students in grades 3-5 to Colorado agriculture, industry and environmental issues. The curriculum is matched to State Standards 2021. The curriculum upon request. Visit: https://engagement.colostate.edu/programs-old/developing-individuals-growing-stewards/

In this curriculum module, students in high school life science, marine science, and/or chemistry courses act as interdisciplinary scientists and delegates to investigate how the changing carbon cycle will affect the oceans along with their integral populations.

The oceans cover 70 percent of the planet and play a critical role in regulating atmospheric carbon dioxide through the interaction of physical, chemical, and biological processes. As a result of anthropogenic activity, a doubling of the atmospheric CO2 concentration (to 760 ppm) is expected to occur by the end of this century. A quarter of the total CO2 emitted has already been absorbed by the surface oceans, changing the marine carbonate system, resulting in a decrease in pH, a change in carbonate-ion concentrations, and a change in the speciation of macro and micronutrients. The shift in the carbonate system is already drastically affecting biological processes in the oceans and is predicted to have major consequences on carbon export to the deep ocean with reverberating effects on atmospheric CO2. Put in simple terms, ocean acidification is a complex phenomenon with complex consequences. Understanding complexity and the impact of ocean acidification requires systems thinking – both in research and in education. Scientific advancement will help us better understand the problem and devise more effective solutions, but executing these solutions will require widespread public participation to mitigate this global problem.

Through these lessons, students closely model what is occurring in laboratories worldwide and at Institute for Systems Biology (ISB) through Monica Orellana’s research to analyze the effect CO2 has on ocean chemistry, ecosystems and human societies. Students experiment, analyze public data, and prepare for a mock summit to address concerns. Student groups represent key “interest groups” and design two experiments to observe the effects of CO2 on seawater pH, diatom growth, algal blooms, nutrient availability, and/or shell dissolution.

The online discussions are the single most important part of this course. They are worth more than any other component of the course and the students and I all put considerable time and energy into the discussions.

Disseminating course content is one of the more challenging aspects of online teaching, and discussions help to fill this gap. In order to have meaningful contributions to the discussions, students have to not only understand the topic, but also need to share their comments on it and relate the topics to a larger question. For example, a discussion about developing geologically active land prompts responses that demonstrate understanding of dynamic landscapes, geologic processes, the role of zoning, hazard mitigation and disaster insurance. In addition, a few students are likely to have had personal experiences with natural disasters and thus add firsthand insights that enrich the discussion.

Discussions are also a place where misconceptions arise and they can be easily addressed within this format. In a perfect world, students would be quick to point out flaws in each others' understanding, but when that does not happen, I seize the opportunity to point out the misconception (gently) and clarify it.

Because students have time to research their answers and reflect on their writing, online discussions can bring out wonderful insights and rewarding debates. Introverted students who might otherwise not be inclined to raise their hand in a face to face classroom seem to have an easier time jumping in. If students are not participating enough, I let them know ask them if anything is preventing them from participating, encourage them to get more involved, and suggest some ways for them to jump in.

The discussion topics all begin with open-ended questions that leave a lot of room for interpretation and the discussion is best when it wanders across a few topics. The discussions last for 1-3 weeks. For the longer discussions I have a series of follow-up questions at the ready. I post these to keep the topic moving, to get the class back on track, or simply to toss out a pop-quiz type question that alert students can grab onto.

Teaching Tips
Adaptations that allow this activity to be successful in an online environment
We all know the dreadful feeling when you pose a question to a lecture hall full of students and all you hear are crickets. An online discussion can be far more thought-provoking than a face-to-face discussion because students have time to reflect on the topic, read up on it, and compose their response. So the adaptations are to start off with a very broad question that allows the topic to wander a bit. A sufficient time frame is needed (minimum of one week) to allow the discussion to develop. Lastly, the discussions have to be worth some significant part of the grade so that students do not treat them as optional.
Elements of this activity that are most effective
The most effective element of online discussion is the way students get pulled into the course and are engaged with the content. This is easy to observe by simply noting how active the discussion is. The discussion about climate change never fails to be the most active one and it really brings everybody to the table (including me!).
Recommendations for other faculty adapting this activity to their own course:

Start off with a very broad question that has no correct answer. When you compose the original question, also prepare a series of follow-up questions that you can use to keep the discussion moving.
Limit the number of discussion boards to one at a time. Having multiple discussions going on simultaneously only dilutes the participation.
Being engaged is critical. The first time I taught this course I really stuck by the "guide on the side" tactic. After that fell fairly flat I got more involved. Students enjoy the interactivity and we all get to know each other much better that way. I post pictures, share anecdotes and seize opportunities to respond to posts in a way that builds content, clears up misconceptions, asks questions, and praises outstanding contributions.

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Open Music Theory is an open-source, interactive, online “text”book for college-level music theory courses. This textbook is meant to support active student engagement with music in the theory classroom. That means that this text is meant to take a back seat to student music making (and breaking). It is not the center of the course. The three original authors use this textbook in the context of “inverted” or “flipped” courses, often following an inquiry-based model. As a result, most of the pages in this textbook do not read like a typical twentieth-century textbook. They are somewhere in between prosy lecture notes and reference material, with minimal graphical or audio examples. Also, unlike many resources for “flipped” classes, there are few resources in this textbook where the core information is presented in video. We made these decisions consciously, so that this would not simply be a multimedia, web-based version of an industrial-era textbook. Rather, we wanted to create a textbook that could serve as a quick reference in the context of active musical engagement.

THE PATTERNS APPROACH
The Patterns Approach to science instruction emphasizes the use of mathematical and phenomenological patterns to predict the future and understand the past. Students construct science knowledge by making an initial “wild-guess”, asking questions, planning and conducting experiments, collecting data, finding a mathematical model that fits their data, explaining the phenomenon based on that model, then finally making a data-informed prediction. Harnessing their own experiences, students compare and contrast low-evidence predictions (wild guesses) to their data-informed prediction to live the experience and learn the value of evidence-based reasoning. Additionally, students engage in several engineering projects in each course, where they must use the Patterns they discover in their designs to optimize their solutions. The Patterns Approach utilizes technology, student-constructed knowledge, frequent opportunities for student talk, and language supports to ensure the engagement and success of every student. By emphasizing, rather than removing, the mathematical connections to science, the Patterns Approach supports student conceptual understanding by connecting real-world inquiry experiences, graphical representations, and mathematical representations of science phenomena.

Social distancing can be tough, and we are all in need of a little positivity! This week’s virtual Read & Seed will help us transform our neighborhood into that of something beautiful. We will read Maybe Something Beautiful: How Art Transformed a Neighborhood by F. Isabel Campoy, Theresa Howell, and Rafael López and create our own positivity posters with nature as our inspiration. We will also participate in a Movement/Music/Finger Play activity by singing The More We Get Together. This lesson is aimed at connecting young learners to their natural world and promote school readiness skills. This Read & Seed activity is presented by The Gardens on Spring Creek by the City of Fort Collins. https://youtu.be/qaKv_ozqklo

Social distancing can be tough, and we are all in need of a little positivity! This week’s virtual Read & Seed will help us transform our neighborhood into that of something beautiful. We will read Maybe Something Beautiful: How Art Transformed a Neighborhood by F. Isabel Campoy, Theresa Howell, and Rafael López and create our own positivity posters with nature as our inspiration. We will also participate in a Movement/Music/Finger Play activity by singing The More We Get Together. This lesson is aimed at connecting young learners to their natural world and promote school readiness skills. This Read & Seed activity is presented by The Gardens on Spring Creek by the City of Fort Collins. https://www.fcgov.com/gardens/files/read-seed-website-positivity-posters.pdf?1588101864

The pro-con-caveat activity is a quick and easy way to engage students through a more interactive lecture experience.

Reasons for the Seasons. This is the Lesson 3 Digging Deeper activity, from Unit 4 Agriculture and the Seasons, from the DIGS (Developing Individuals, Growing Stewards) AmeriCorps Curriculum from CSU. The curriculum focuses on introducing students in grades 3-5 to Colorado agriculture, industry and environmental issues. The curriculum is matched to State Standards 2021. The curriculum upon request. Visit: https://engagement.colostate.edu/programs-old/developing-individuals-growing-stewards/

Planting seeds can be hard work! They require a lot of care and a lot of patience, as we will learn from our story this week. During this virtual Read & Seed we will read The Carrot Seed by Ruth Krauss and Crockett Johnson. Participate in a Movement/Music/Finger Play activity by singing a garden song, and create seed tape to plant and start your own garden. This lesson is aimed at connecting young learners to their natural world and promote school readiness skills. This Read & Seed activity is presented by The Gardens on Spring Creek by the City of Fort Collins. https://youtu.be/3ER8I--SRbU

Planting seeds can be hard work! They require a lot of care and a lot of patience, as we will learn from our story this week. During this virtual Read & Seed we will read The Carrot Seed by Ruth Krauss and Crockett Johnson. Participate in a Movement/Music/Finger Play activity by singing a garden song, and create seed tape to plant and start your own garden. This lesson is aimed at connecting young learners to their natural world and promote school readiness skills. This Read & Seed activity is presented by The Gardens on Spring Creek by the City of Fort Collins. https://www.fcgov.com/gardens/files/read-seed-website-seed-tape.pdf?1590515650

Students are introduced to the concept of viscoelasticity and some of the material behaviors of viscoelastic materials, including strain rate dependence, stress relaxation, creep, hysteresis and preconditioning. Viscoelastic material behavior is compared to elastic solids and viscous fluids. Students learn about materials that have viscoelastic behavior along with the importance of engineers understanding viscoelasticity. To best engage the students, conduct the first half of the associated Creepy Silly Putty activity before conducting this lesson.

In this Adaptation Name Game, students sitting or standing in a circle play a version of tag, with one person in the center. When a person in the circle says another person’s name, the person in the center of the circle tries to touch the person whose name was said, before they can say someone else’s name. Later, students pause to brainstorm strategies to improve their performance, then play some more. Students learn that this was a representation of how certain structures and behaviors help organisms survive in their habitat, and that these are adaptations that species inherit over time. This game helps students learn each other’s names, while “lightly” introducing them to what adaptations are. Note: This activity is only an introduction; to gain any meaningful understanding of the topic, students will need more adaptation-focused activities, such as Adaptations Intro-Live!, Structures & Behaviors, and Related & Different, which engage students more deeply in understanding the concept through interactions with real organisms.