Look for: Ideas about how some places are showing great…

2.C Analyze and interpret data about patterns in rates of change and numerical relationships to determine similarities and differences between drought and flood sites.

• Ideas about how some places are showing greater or lesser increase or decrease in precipitation and temperature.
• Ideas about how all places are showing temperatures going up, and importantly, most of this change in temperature is in recent years.
• Ideas about how precipitation is increasing and the rate of storm events is going up (happening more often) for flood places.
• Ideas about how drought places are experiencing a combination of less precipitation, less snowpack, and less groundwater. These places are experiencing more frequent “dry” conditions than before.

Students may struggle with some of the precipitation patterns. It might be helpful to use the Earth’s Water System Model to help students understand that, even if one part of the water system for a place seems normal, another part of the system might not be. For example, precipitation in Porterville hasn’t gone down drastically over the years, but they had a few extreme years of little rain coupled with decreasing groundwater, which ultimately led to people’s wells drying up. The system model might help students make connections like this within a case site and also help support them in understanding similarities and differences across case sites.

Encourage students to update their Progress Tracker with any new ideas.

The individual Progress Tracker is a space for students to be creative and to synthesize learning in their own words and drawings at the end of a lesson. It is not supposed to follow a prescriptive plan or structure and should be a low-stakes opportunity for students to make sense of what they are learning without the worry and anxiety that comes with knowing their work will be graded. Students have already engaged in discussion about this question, so the Progress Tracker provides an additional modality for students to express their understanding and reasoning in their own way. Encourage students to express what they have learned using a mode that makes sense for them.