Desert Issues (in-class)

Content Standards for California Public Schools

 

Science	Grade 9th –12th - Ecology: 6. Stability in an ecosystem is a balance between competing effects. As a basis for understanding this concept: a. Students know biodiversity is the sum total of different kinds of organisms and is affected by alterations of habitats. b. Students know how to analyze changes in an ecosystem resulting from changes in climate, human activity, introduction of nonnative species, or changes in population size. d. Students know how water, carbon, and nitrogen cycle between abiotic resources and organic matter in the ecosystem and how oxygen cycles through photosynthesis and respiration. e. Students know a vital part of an ecosystem is the stability of its producers and decomposers. f. Students know at each link in a food web some energy is stored in newly made structures but much energy is dissipated into the environment as heat. This dissipation may be represented in an energy pyramid. g.* Students know how to distinguish between the accommodation of an individual organism to its environment and the gradual adaptation of a lineage of organ-isms through genetic change. Energy in the Earth System: 6. Climate is the long-term average of a region’s weather and depends on many factors. As a basis for understanding this concept: a. Students know weather (in the short run) and climate (in the long run) involve the transfer of energy into and out of the atmosphere. b. Students know the effects on climate of latitude, elevation, topography, and proximity to large bodies of water and cold or warm ocean currents. c. Students know how Earth’s climate has changed over time, corresponding to changes in Earth’s geography, atmospheric composition, and other factors, such as solar radiation and plate movement.
History and Social Science	Grade 11th - 11.11 Students analyze the major social problems and domestic policy issues in contemporary American society. 5. Trace the impact of, need for, and controversies associated with environmental conservation, expansion of the national park system, and the development of environmental protection laws, with particular attention to the interaction between environmental protection advocates and property rights advocates. 7. Explain how the federal, state, and local governments have responded to demo-graphic and social changes such as population shifts to the suburbs, racial concentrations in the cities, Frostbelt-to-Sunbelt migration, international migration, decline of family farms, increases in out-of-wedlock births, and drug abuse. Grade 9th –12th Historical Interpretation: 1. Students show the connections, causal and otherwise, between particular historical events and larger social, economic, and political trends and developments. 2. Students recognize the complexity of historical causes and effects, including the limitations on determining cause and effect.
Language Arts	Grade 9th –10th - Listening and Speaking Strategies: Comprehension: 1.1 Formulate judgments about the ideas under discussion and support those judgments with convincing evidence. Grade 11th – 12th - Listening and Speaking Strategies: 1.3 Interpret and evaluate the various ways in which events are presented and information is communicated by visual image makers (e.g., graphic artists, documentary filmmakers, illustrators, news photographers).
Mathematics	Grade 9th –12th - Probability and Statistics: 1.0 Students know the definition of the notion of independent events and can use the rules for addition, multiplication, and complementation to solve for probabilities of particular events in finite sample spaces.