In this article we present a strategy to help students unpack complex, socioscientific issues. We outline a 90-minute learning experience where students are asked to explore the complicated cause and effect relationships that shaped the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. This approach challenges students to represent the ways scientific content like viral transmission can shape social issues like economic hardship and mental health. Students engage in the scientific practice of modeling and address two crosscutting concepts: cause and effect, and systems and system models. Although this example uses COVID-19 as an anchoring phenomenon, this lesson can be adapted easily to target other content, making it a versatile tool for teachers trying to help students make sense of complex issues and understand how science impacts their daily lives.