Official Site of The State of New Jersey

• Needs and Wants (Kindergarten Social Studies)
• Global Citizen (Grade 1 Social Studies)
• Geography, Humans, and Environment (Grade 2 Social Studies)
• GLOBE Water Module (Grades K–4; available in multiple languages)
• NASA Climate Kids (Science)

• Geography (Grade 3 Social Studies)
• How Do Plants Grow and Survive? (Grade 3 Science)
• Bananas (Grade 5 Social Studies)

• Building Ecological Solutions for Coastal Community Hazards (Interdisciplinary)
• Car of the Future (Science and Engineering)
• Dreaming in Green Young Voices on Climate Change (Social Studies and Science)
• Eco Ambassador Program (Interdisciplinary)
• Power for Developing Countries (Social Studies and Science)
• Resilient Schools Consortium Program and Curriculum (Interdisciplinary)
• Where Do You Put a Wind Farm? (Social Studies and Science)
• Youth Climate Summit Toolkit (Interdisciplinary)

• Building Ecological Solutions for Coastal Community Hazards (Interdisciplinary)
• Climate Change Foreign Policy (Social Studies)
• Eco Ambassador Program (Interdisciplinary)
• Energy Lab (Physics)
• GLOBE Atmosphere (Physics; available in multiple languages)
• GLOBE Biosphere (Biology; available in multiple languages)
• GLOBE Hydrosphere (Chemistry; available in multiple languages)
• GLOBE Pedosphere (Chemistry)
• Heating it Up: The Chemistry of the Greenhouse Effect (Chemistry)
• Simulation of International Negotiations to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions (Social Studies and Science)
• State Electricity on Google Earth: How Many Solar Panels Would it Take? (Physics)
• Youth Climate Summit Toolkit (Interdisciplinary)

STEM Teaching Tools is a website that provides research-based instructional guidance on how to address STEM-based issues. These resources were created by the Council for State Science Supervisors in collaboration with The Institute for Science & Math Education with funding provided by the National Science Foundation. The practice briefs below were selected because they highlight how to effectively teach climate change within a STEM learning experience. The descriptions explain the focus of each brief to facilitate educator selection. Each practice brief includes a section about: what is the issue, why it matters to you, things to consider, reflection questions, attending to equity and recommended actions you can take.

STEM Teaching Tools Practice Briefs

• Scientific Literacy Involves Understanding Global Climate Change & What People Can Do About It
  The complexities of climate change and its interdisciplinary nature reflects the systemic nature of many of today’s environmental challenges—making it an ideal platform for implementing practice-based instruction focused on contemporary science in the classroom. The science and engineering practices of modeling, analyzing data, argumentation and designing solutions can be an important focus of any climate change curriculum.
• Addressing Controversial Science Topics in the K–­12 Classroom
  Controversy is a core part of the scientific world. As individuals, we must constantly navigate different perspectives and make sense of conflicting arguments on issues that impact our everyday lives. However, in our schools educators have often been reluctant to engage students in the examination of controversial topics. Being able to reason about and act on controversial topics is fundamental to being scientifically literate. Learning how to teach such topics will help ensure that students are equipped to participate fully in our democracy.
• Keeping Climate Science Learning and Instruction Focused on Creating Solutions and Building Community Resilience
  Climate change is affecting us all. Young people and low-income communities of color are some of the most heavily impacted populations. As anticipated impacts worsen, people under 30 suffer from increasing levels of sleep disorders, despair, depression, and substance abuse. Research has shown that teaching climate science alone contributes to anxieties and phobias. However, by also introducing students to climate solutions—along with opportunities to take scientific and civic action—climate learning can have a positive effect on students’ well-being and life and employment prospects.
• Using Local Phenomena to Communicate Climate Solutions
  Communicating the reasons why we should respond to climate change is no longer enough. Climate science communication must be grounded in actions within the local communities. Focusing on the local phenomena (e.g., sea level rise and flooding along the Jersey Shore) that are challenging communities will allow students to envision solutions and approaches appropriate for their own community. When collaborative decision-making amongst local governments, nonprofits, businesses and the public is implemented, a sense of collective agency is fostered.
• How to Focus Students’ Engineering Design Projects on Science Learning
  Science and engineering share many of the same practices, however, they are fundamentally different fields with different pursuits and processes. Scientists typically seek multiple strands of evidence to support or refute claims about the natural world, while engineers use an iterative problem-solving process to meet specific, often human-related, needs. Tensions between these two fields can make it difficult to integrate engineering into the science classroom, but simple strategies can help teachers use engineering design as an inclusive way to teach science concepts.
• Students Should Generate Criteria and Constraints for Engineering Design Problems—Not Just be Provided with Them
  A Framework for K-12 Science Education (2012) suggests that students at all grade levels should be identifying engineering design problems and developing criteria and constraints. However, in practice, students often receive pre-written criteria and constraints, or begin design challenges without specified criteria or constraints. This tool provides guidance for teachers as they support students to move from a broadly stated design challenge to identifying robust criteria and constraints and developing a detailed understanding of the design problem they are solving.
• How Place-Based Science Education Strategies Can Support Equity for Students, Teachers and Communities
  Meaningful interactions with elders, scientists, and community partners focused on studying locally relevant phenomena and identifying authentic design problems can engage students in learning in a way that teaching abstract concepts or broader global issues may not. It can also foster local agency, responsibility, accountability, and relationships through the development of a shared sense of place. Place-based science education is fundamentally transdisciplinary and cross-cultural, fostering scientific communication practices needed to address existing and emerging problems while truly involving stakeholders from diverse backgrounds.
• Focusing Science and Engineering Learning on Justice-Centered Phenomena Across PK–12
  The New Jersey Department of Education’s vision for climate change education involves students engaging in active investigations to make sense of natural phenomena and analyzing and building solutions to problems. Basing these investigations on justice-centered phenomena can be a powerful way to support learning. Justice-centered investigations can provide important opportunities for students to engage in projects that support equity for communities and to see how the application of science and engineering are fundamentally entwined with political and ethical questions, dimensions and decisions.
• Using Science Investigations to Develop Caring Practices for Social-Ecological Systems
  Developing deep commitments to the human and more-than-human inhabitants of ecosystems is crucial for cultivating students’ caring knowledge and practices within the escalating challenges of the climate crisis. All learners should build interdependent, caring relationships with more-than-humans focused on shared thriving to promote ecological identities, deep STEM learning about local places and responsibilities.
• What is the Role of Informal Science Education in Supporting the Vision For K–12 Science Education?
  There can be a mistaken impression that the vision for K­–12 climate change education is only relevant to classroom instruction. But youth frequently engage in powerful learning activities that take place after or outside-of-school. To capitalize on those experiences, educators and other stakeholders should learn about, leverage and broker connections for youth in and out of school learning experiences.