explain to a reviewer how Earth Science B meets UC area D and completes the CA NGSS coverage begun in Semester A, and run phenomenon launches built on California data.
Completing a full-year laboratory course. Earth Science B is the second half of a grade 9 course that, for many students, is their first high-school laboratory science. By January they have written four lab reports and four performance tasks in Semester A; B raises the demand. Students now plan investigations themselves (the porosity and heating labs), build computational models (a groundwater basin, a carbon-and-temperature model, NetLogo fire spread), and finish with an engineering design proposal defended before a mock city council. Together the two semesters cite every HS-ESS performance expectation and all four HS-ETS1 engineering expectations.
The area D evidence. Every unit’s Investigation Lab is hands-on, with a procedure, data table and claim-evidence-reasoning analysis, and every unit carries at least one additional lab: the flashlight sun-angle lab and the milk-haze model in Unit 2, the land-ice and sea-ice lab in Unit 3, the shake-table towers in Unit 4, and the sponge-and-clay subsidence model in Unit 1. Simulations appear as supporting activities or as the alternative route for a student who cannot do the lab in person, never as the lab itself.
Phenomena students can check. Each unit opens with California data: the April 1, 2015 snowpack at about 5% of average; San Francisco’s July normal high of 66.3 °F against Fresno’s 97.7 °F; the Mauna Loa curve rising from 315.98 ppm in 1959 to 424.61 ppm in 2024; and the Camp Fire of November 2018. Because these are real records, students can look them up, and some will know them from their own lives. Use that. Ask what students have noticed about fog, heat, dry wells, smoke days or rising water, and put those observations on the question board beside the data.
Keep the questions driving. As in Semester A, the question board opens and closes each unit. In B it matters even more, because the later units end in decisions (a water plan, a forecast, an engineering proposal). Students who have asked the questions own the decisions. A launch that turns into a lecture on climate change loses them; one that ends with ‘How fast is the sea rising at the Golden Gate, and how would we know?’ keeps them.
Where the area D evidence is
| Unit | Investigation Lab (hands-on) | Additional labs | Culminating task |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 Earth’s Systems and California’s Water | 1.2 Porosity and permeability | 1.3 Sponge-and-clay subsidence | A Water Plan for One Basin |
| 2 Weather, Climate and the Energy Balance | 2.2 Heating water and sand | 2.1 Sun angle; 2.3 Milk-haze model | Explaining California’s Climates |
| 3 Climate Change: Evidence and Models | 3.2 Seltzer, shells and acidification | 3.3 Land ice and sea ice | An Evidence-Based Forecast for California |
| 4 Resources, Hazards and Human Impacts | 4.2 Permeable pavement (engineering) | 4.4 Shake-table towers | Engineering Resilience proposal |
Adding students’ own observations to a data launch
Real data become a phenomenon when students connect them to what they have seen.
- Show the data (a graph or table) with a one-line source.
- Ask: what do you notice, and what do you wonder? Two minutes silent writing.
- Ask: where have you seen something like this in your own life? Accept any answer, and never require personal disclosure.
- Sort questions into investigable and not-yet-investigable; rewrite two as investigable.
- Name the lesson where each question will be taken up.
In Earth Science B, the NetLogo fire model can replace the hands-on engineering lab for the whole class.
How confident are you that you can explain the area D case for Earth Science B and run a data-based phenomenon launch?