• Participate in a supported learning community alongside your peers to build content and pedagogical knowledge and skills. (Common to all courses)
• Experience phenomena driven lessons which model three dimensional NGSS teaching and learning appropriate for 3rd–8th grade students. (Common to all courses)
• Learn that the Earth is a complex system of interacting rock, water, air and life – the geosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere and biosphere.
• Explore how these spheres are continually changing and how changes in one sphere can cause change in others.
• Understand these changes involve the cycling of matter fueled by energy from the Sun and the Earth’s interior.
• Learn that these changes can be explained by universal laws, and understand these laws and apply them to our local environment.
• Study the Earth’s spheres as represented and evident in the Great Lakes region and discover how the long and complex natural history of the region makes it socially, economically and environmentally significant. 

NGSS Disciplinary Core Ideas

PS1: Matter and its interactions

• PS1.A: Structure and properties of matter

PS3: Energy

• PS3.D: Energy in chemical processes and every day life

LS1: From molecules to organisms: structures and processes

• LS1.C: Organization for matter and energy flow in organisms

LS2: Ecosystems: interactions, energy and dynamics

• LS2.B: Cycle of matter and energy transfer in ecosystems

LS4: Biological evolution: unity and diversity

• LS4.B: Natural selection

ESS1: Earth’s place in the universe

• ESS1.B: Earth and the solar system
• ESS1.C: The history of planet earth

ESS2: Earth’s systems

ESS2.A: Earth’s materials and systems

• ESS2.B: Plate tectonics and large scale systems interactions
• ESS2.C: The roles of water in earth’s surface processes
• ESS2.D: Weather and climate

ESS3: Earth and human activity

• ESS3.D: Global climate change