Sustainable Schoolyards is a 5-month professional learning program run by the California Global Education Project to facilitate teachers working with teachers to create and implement climate justice projects. The program meets virtually 3 times between January and May, with follow-up support in between. Virtual connections with another classroom show students they are not alone in their actions. The program helps teachers prepare students to take action for social justice using both the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the Global Competence Framework. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals help teachers and students connect the specific action they are taking on local issues to action being taken around the world and the Global Competence Framework helps teachers and students build capacity for global competence, and prepare for a world of increasing complexity, diversity and interconnectedness. Examples are shared from a TK and Kindergarten classroom that participated in the Sustainable Schoolyards, and were paired up for the virtual exchange component of the program. The TK class engaged in a school-wide campaign about food waste and composting, and the Kindergarten class learned about responsible production and consumption, and published a book to share their knowledge with their community.

Science in the elementary grades is often deprioritized in comparison to ELA and mathematics. We wondered, how comprehensively, frequently, and consistently is science included in elementary schools’ schedules? We reviewed daily schedules for 14 schools in 9 districts across the U.S. to qualitatively examine how science is represented on the daily instructional schedule. These schools were selected as “best case scenarios” recommended by district or state science leaders as places where science is taken seriously. We complemented these schedules with data from 21 interviews with teachers, science specialists, and school leaders to better understand how science actually appears in children’s daily instructional experiences. We found that, in these schools, science is taught comprehensively (though not as comprehensively as ELA or mathematics), has the potential for being taught frequently (even in the lower elementary grades), and is taught somewhat consistently (albeit usually in some kind of rotation with social studies). We present implications for how leaders can craft school schedules to make science comprehensive, frequent, and consistent in the elementary grades, to provide important opportunities to learn and thrive for all children.

Schoolyards and school gardens present a rich context for students to engage with engineering and design. We describe the Designing Trellises unit, an example of a guided 3rd-5th grade engineering experience in the garden. In this unit, students work collaboratively toward a shared classroom design goal: creating 2-3 pea plant trellises for the school garden. They collaboratively design, research, prototype, build, and test their trellis designs. Students figure out disciplinary core ideas about balanced and unbalanced forces through engagement in asking questions, planning and carrying out investigations, designing solutions and other science and engineering practices. At the end of the unit, teachers and students report that students feel a strong sense of agency and pride as they ask and answer questions and create designs that are important to them and their community.

The Poetry of Science

Science 101

Meeting Needs for Survival

In this edition of Tech Talk, climate education is addressed with two engaging digital resources: the Maine Online Open-Source Education (MOOSE) Climate Education Module and Google Earth. Climate education resources for elementary students, specifically K-2, that are developmentally appropriate are few and far between but two apps stand out. The MOOSE Climate Education Module MOOSE is progressive in both content and curricular design, integrating time SEL elements to support young learners. While designed for use by Maine educators with their students, the site offers content relevant to students from all regions. MOOSE resources are organized into a developmentally appropriate and compelling learning progression connecting directly to the lives of Mainers. Google Earth is now available through a web interface but it still has that terrific "wow" factor we have come to know and love. The resource is a powerful tool for applications across the curriculum including science and climate education in particular. In this issue, learn of ideas for building student skills in key digital literacy competencies while engaging students in a tailored and impactful learning experience.

In an age where catastrophic damage from climate-related events circulates through social and print media, it is important to build communities of hope for our elementary students (Hestness, et al., 2019, Sanchez, et al., 2021). Climate justice education is a vehicle for creating hope and building strong, resilient communities where students are empowered to act for themselves and their natural surroundings (Svarstad, 2021). Local phenomena can be leveraged to engage elementary students in civic responsibility and science and engineering practices, inspiring students to take action through proposing solutions to their community (Coleman, et al., 2019). We engage urban elementary students in a year-long place-based experiential learning centered on a student-driven local phenomenon. This project situates students as scientists collecting data and evidence to develop claims and argue from evidence regarding bird structures and their survival built and green environments. Students create authentic relationships with nature, rectifying the unjust relationships from past practices that contribute to environmental degradation of local communities (Gardiner, 2011). Climate justice is served as students use their voices for themselves, for the environment, and for the future of the planet they will inhabit.

Current and future Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, and Medicine (STEMM) students must grapple with one of the most pressing scientific issues of the century: climate change. Teaching about climate change with our youngest learners requires preparation, planting roots to foster growth, innovation, and sustainability. Building a community garden with elementary students is a way to act towards climate justice as it reminds us about how all living things are part of an interconnected system. This paper describes a fifth-grade climate change action project that was part of a unit that aligns with the state science standards and the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), focused on how science learning can be used to protect the Earth’s resources and local environments. The anchoring phenomenon and lessons of the unit highlighted the annual migration of the monarch butterflies, a local endangered species and phenomenon. By planting milkweed in the garden, students learned about migration, life cycles, greenhouse gasses and the survival of monarch butterflies. This article provides educators with ideas and practical suggestions for building a garden and an overview of how the project can be implemented within a school community.

Community resources offer extensions of early science learning that can deepen connections to the local ecosystem. This column offers ideas to extend early childhood classroom science through community mapping.