Welcome to the Integrating Chemistry and Earth science (ICE) project.  We are developing an innovative Earth-chemistry curriculum for the high school chemistry course in Baltimore City Public Schools (City Schools). This video features highlights from some of our Earth-chemistry lessons and includes teachers and students from several Baltimore City high schools plus interviews with some of our key project staff.

We are interested in your thoughts, especially if you are working on a similar project that integrates NGSS aligned high school Earth and space science content into a high school chemistry, biology or physics course.  

How are your school districts incorporating Earth/space science into curriculum?

How does your district prepare teachers to teach subject matter in which they may not have trained?

Is your district developing classroom-based 3D assessments?  What approaches are you using?

If you want to know more about ICE, email our Project's PI at berkowitza@caryinstitute.org.  Thanks for watching!

I would like to add my welcome to the ICE project! In addition to the questions Bess raises, we'd also be interested in hearing your ideas and experiences teaching about Earth and Environmental Science phenomena in an urban context. 

Looking forward to hearing from you!

 Video provided a great look at the project and how teachers and students are participating in the study. Did the students look exclusively at the impacts of urban living on Environmental Science or did they consider the other factors outside of the city (farming, suburban sprawl) that impact the environment? Enjoyed the video and learning about your work.

Do you discuss the "fall line" in your curriculum?  It might provide an avenue of dissemination to other urban cities on the fall line, like DC, Philadelphia, New York, etc.

Great video!

Is the ICE curriculum incorporated throughout the entire year of chemistry or does it complement a few key concepts?

Excellent initiative! In our project CIRE2N, we are developing curricular materials to integrate Environmental Science and Nanotechnology. We are working with science graduate students to transform their research in academic practice /activities

What recommendation do you have to effectively train teachers and promote their interest in including new initiatives in their courses?

I really appreciate this approach. I am a classroom teacher, transitioning to NGSS and this seems to be very learner centered and working with complex ideas that by their nature are interdisciplinary.  It seems that some of the printed materials and some of the examples seem Baltimore specific.  If you scale up to more regions will these be materials and examples that are easily available or accessible for other cities?  I am also interested in knowing how transferable the program would be to a rural setting.  

What great questions! We have focused on urban phenomena in large part because we want the students to see that Earth science and chemistry can help them understand and make decisions about their local environment. Of the phenomena we focus on - acidification of the Chesapeake Bay (with impacts on the iconic oyster) and mountain formation/weathering would be applicable to many places beyond Baltimore, though our weathering lessons emphasize the role of the chemistry of building materials in the weathering process, so still an urban focus. The heat island phenomenon is distinctively urban, though we suspect that the same driving forces at play in making cities warmer than surrounding areas would apply at the level of just a school and its yard, though not as likely to be easily measured. We hope that the overall approach to integrating Earth science and chemistry, and blending science practices (designing investigations, data sense making, modeling) and cross-cutting themes will be applicable to teaching about similar phenomena in many different settings.

I think you chose some really powerful localized phenomena and I love that you have thought through how they can (and cannot) be used in other cities! I have also been doing a lot of thinking about integrating earth science with chemistry and one thing I have struggled with is reasoning at the appropriate scale. So much of chemical reasoning occurs and an atomic and sub-atomic level and earth science phenomena are so complex - how do you motivate students to want to think about particle-level interactions in your units? I find this especially challenging when students do not have a lot of prior knowledge and intuitions to build on and so there is just so much unpacking before you can get to something like pH! First we have to do sense making around dissolution and ions!

Related to this, I then struggle with the fact that in order to master both chemistry and earth science PEs in one unit - the class often has to spend an extended time on one phenomena. This can sometimes lead to burnout on the students part! Do you ever struggle with this for your longer units?

I really appreciate your questions and thinking! We've taken our best first shot at identifying phenomena that are engaging, accessible and amenable to exploration at both the atomic and macro scales. So, for example, for the unit on Chemistry and the Life and Death of Baltimore's Mountains, students apply what they've already learned about acid-base reactions and new concepts connecting chemistry to physical hardness to weathering processes that manifest in 1) the slow but noticeable weathering of Baltimore's iconic marble stoops on the row houses, 2) the slower weathering of marble vs. granite stones in a simulated stream, and 3) the regional pattern of valleys where marble occurs and ridges where granite occurs. Our research, which is collecting student work, classroom observations, and student interviews, will allow us to answer your (and our, for that matter) questions better once the results are in (the ESS-infused units are being taught RIGHT NOW!). 

I shared your question with our ICE team and here's a response from Kevin Garner, the Coordinator of STEM Science for the Baltimore City School System:

There are a lot of questions and think abouts. My first thought is choosing a phenomenon that is interesting, relevant, and big enough to cover a lot of content.  For example, our unit for on ocean acidification. We build on topics to answer the question(s).  pH, acid/base, chemical reactions/balancing equations, and the effects.  We have adequate activities for students, show how Chemistry is not a stand alone course, and how the current trends do play a role in their life in Baltimore. Same can be said with the last two units.

As far as mastering the standards, that is why we chose to weave ESS standards in the 3-course sequence.

Thanks for sharing! In your video, I saw students walking around and collecting data and I like how this was a part of them learning about their immediate surroundings because it really brings direct relevancy to the content.  Did this prompt any sort of "aha moments" for folks?  What conditions best enable this sort of learning?

Also, in a comment above about supporting teachers, you talk about keeping the communication lines open.  I imagine that is harder than it seems because of the different needs and interests of any participating teacher and also the different demands and day-to-day roles of all the partners... can you speak more to balancing all of this?  What seem to be some best practices that may have emerged about this collaboration?

What a fantastic program!! I am excited to learn more about the expansion as it occurs.

It seems like the teachers really benefit from the program. What outcomes do you focus on for the teachers and would you be willing to share your metrics? Thanks!

I am looking forward to seeing how you bring this to schools outside the Baltimore area.  Nice work!

 Similarly to Mary Murphy, I would love to see how your curriculum can be adopted by schools outside of the Baltimore area. Do you think that the project could be applied to Southern California where we deal with the increased car pollution?  What activities could be adopted?

I like to fact that you have integrated chemistry and earth sciences together.  They share a lot of common ground and our students should see that learning about one can help them in the other subject.

Thank you very much Alan for your suggestions.

Really cool concept and very important work!