Creating Global Bonds, Grade 12: STEM Road Map for High School (STEM Road Map Curriculum Series)

What if you could challenge your twelfth-grade students to explore energy consumption and climate change in their own communities, and connect that information with other communities around the world? With this volume in the STEM Road Map Curriculum Series, you can!

Creating Global Bonds outlines a journey that will steer your students toward authentic problem solving while grounding them in integrated STEM disciplines. Like the other volumes in the series, this book is designed to meet the growing need to infuse real-world learning into K–12 classrooms.

This interdisciplinary, three-lesson module uses project- and problem-based learning to help students create an action plan to address issues of energy consumption and climate change, exploring the topic at both local and global levels. Students will gather data on energy consumption and climate change in their communities, partnering with international students to undertake problem-solving activities that examine issues that are both common and unique to each community.

To support this goal, students will do the following:

• Identify modes and trends in energy consumption in their communities and regions
• Analyze how those patterns of energy consumption impact climate change
• Partner with students internationally to coordinate efforts to synthesize energy consumption data and discern connections across contexts, taking the form of an international blog
• Design and present an action plan to address issues of energy consumption and climate change, ultimately delivering a white paper and interactive web-based presentation on local and international issues of energy consumption and climate change

The STEM Road Map Curriculum Series is anchored in the Next Generation Science Standards, the Common Core State Standards, and the Framework for 21st Century Learning. In-depth and flexible, Creating Global Bonds can be used as a whole unit or in part to meet the needs of districts, schools, and teachers who are charting a course toward an integrated STEM approach.

Carla C. Johnson is a Professor of Science Education and Office of Research and Innovation Faculty Research Fellow at North Carolina State University, North Carolina, USA.

Janet B. Walton is a Senior Research Scholar at North Carolina State’s College of Education in Raleigh, North Carolina, USA.

Erin E. Peters-Burton is the Donna R. and David E. Sterling Endowed Professor in Science Education at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, USA.