It's Earth Day, and the hottest Spring ever in California…and this is a moment to learn something.  At least that's the premise in NGSS and the Common Core that will lead to recreational readers this summer, new options in future careers for nontraditional populations, and the use of new and old tools and devices by teachers and kids in tandem with new learning protocols.

NOAA is reporting the world is heating up.  The Weather Service tracks daily reporting round the U.S.  This can become a way to learn about aerosols that lead to greater or lesser Asthma and lung function understanding on the sports field or during the day.

It's Spring and children learn about the seasons, crops, as well as vocabulary like temperature, rain, humidity, precipitation….even look up the pollen scale that is impacting breathing or exercise.  Our kids are studying "What's up with the Atmosphere?- Exploring the colors of the sky" and learning basic math and STEM vocabulary this month.

For some learners core study achievement is minimal and needs reinforcement, combining these needs and wants with the new STEM/STEAM configuration looks like an optimal match.  Not one that has been tried yet by everyone, but bubbling like groundwater up from research at universities and in conversations at Congress since the 1990's and perhaps is like an artisan well, ready to emerge if not source a bumper crop of unexpected talent(s).

Georgette Yakman (see 2013 listed THE Journal article) and other researchers are asserting through field research the value of expanding the depth of disciplines we teach in combining subjects and teaching techniques to make school relevant and rigorous using STEM.  Congress will be exploring the role of new realms of pedagogy that are now using Science, Technology, Engineering and Math to enliven classrooms and catch children up (bridge the gap that makes school impossible for some children).

Some Districts and some LEA's are choosing at a local level to find solutions for common core integration through Robert Marzano and Julia Simm's book. CCSS in literacy and NGSS in grades 3-5 just may have more in common than one would think.

These education books are more often considered by a school that has a problem or a teacher that is headed to a workshop because they need a way to cope, but the Common Core supports classroom subject teachers to demonstrate how to learn how to learn, instruct through scaffolding and rubrics how to approach collaboration and in the process teachers can collaboratively explore how to think like scientists, how to reconstruct teaching math with real life elements, and grants, contracts and requirements require new skills that focus on how school leaders will now engage with tenured staff to new hires to change school climate and bring forward a new era of teachers facilitating student centered learning..

In one example this quarter of public/nonprofit/community engagements for student achievement, New Education Options is showing children how to become sky observers through musical theater with reading, writing, and articulation through decoding language, symbols and signs. Using a new Globe Elementary book and realia of STEM accomplishment, director and artist educator, Bo Lebo has been inviting children to observe "The World Around them" and above them and then input data that can be converted from farenheit to centigrade.  They are the first group of 60 children in ESC NW at this Lake Balboa elementary school who are using Math, Science, and technology to input their data learning about the  atmosphere through weather and air quality using their senses, measurement, music and student research teams.

This Earth Day, their classroom as, a research group, entered temperatures for the first time into the new Globe Elementary 1 Day Temperature observation data sheet.  They studied cloud formations and  in the process found out that the circumstances on hand can change what you measure and how you measure which will change your premise or your or choice of experiments.  They are new blended instruction learners at the local level.  They are excited to be working with satellites and classrooms worldwide with NASA and NOAA's NSF missions.   As learners they are "changing a misfortune into an advantage" making the moment a "win-win" for students across the district.  They are linking deeper relationships to classroom subject matter.  They are using IT to collapse the separation between children studying Science as a passive subject activity to getting vitally involved whether manually, descriptively, or using colors and design to record future observation sheets. 

Science and inquiry becomes memorable.  Children form connections and understand relationships and they are the seeds and sometimes by practicum the scenes of building a broader academic vocabulary.  These 4^th graders have linked a sturdy song… "Four Prancing Horses " from the MusicEdventures conference games to measuring on an aerosol grid, dancing out a 6 count  or a 8 count sequence, testing for an average air temperature and averaging their mean data to enter into the Globe site.

Earth Day has become a flower-bed of experiences that allow children near Lake Balboa and the Sepulveda Basin to engage with real Science.   What began last July at the Globe Annual Conference at the Universal Hilton with teachers learning protocols and working outdoors with Nitrates and Oxygen measurements with ipads and android/apple phones is continuing at the Technology Magnet. Whether a common denominator or a time signature symbol, STEM/STEAM children are sprouting new questions about what a scientist does and working in lab teams.  Yakman's kids or Taylor Elementary's teachers have engaged city planners to art classes to zoom in and out on the life cycle of a plant.  In order to bridge adult concepts to kids, these projects are fun, tangible, collaborative and SMART.  Garage Band, Apple TV, Globe's Live Data Entry and other processes, applications are teamed with enthusiasm, new access, and even the national weather service website(s).  The outcomes are dynamic and relationships are discovered, reviewed, transformed or built and studied.

The EL cultural premise that takes down the wall between art and music and subject matter or between vocational and academic subjects is just as innovative as the idea from the NSF that there is no more "informal science".  The USDOE approach has created a new world of boys and girls working in tandem, solo, or unison to solve real live problems by doing the practice of Science in a classroom even if it starts with dropping cream into water with straws.  Children love it.  They discover new aptitudes and voices.  They practice with new tools.  Wikipedia can show them devices to measure that they never imagined and charts can show relationships to latin words that describe the Earth, Earth Sciences, and the Spheres we live in.

Some children will plant seedlings worldwide today and for the next month.  If we tend to our learning capacity with new tools, our kids may not yet be astronauts, but they can explore hydrology with kids abroad and rainforests at the LA Zoo.  They can see the chocolate plants planned to grow at the Arboretum this summer or seed Tomatoes from Tomato-mania.  They can clean up the LA River with FoLAR and use a hose, a pitcher and the ipad at school to explore the watershed and new ideas sprout.  What a great moment this Spring to understand that the need to integrate Science and Arts into the classroom is also connecting kids to stewardship, comprehension, understanding and to our Natural and civic resources that balance their studies, awaken their hearts and inspire new interest in school and in ELA vocabularies or projects with their teachers and friends.  We want kids to volunteer and do community service…whether for Tree People, the Mayor's new plan or at the Great Clean up or counting the Canada Goose…..they will head to the Cube, see the Tarpits, enjoy the new metro and in the process enjoy where they live and discover the STEM behind Art and the Art behind STEM. Just like the Leonard Bernstein Artful Learning Framework says: "The best way to learn something is in the context of another discipline"- we want children to become fluent in academics and good citizens, STEM supports both!

The Arboretum and new plantings:

http://www.arboretum.org/

http://www.lazoo.org/

https://learner.org/jnorth/

STEM Ed.com:

The Journal/21^st Century Curriculum/October 2013/Digital Edition by Michelle Fredette:

https://thejournal.com/Articles/2013/10/17/For these schools, adding arts to STEM boosts curriculum

Globe Elementary:

http://www.globe.gov/

http://www.globe.gov/globe-data

Satellites Sage III and Calipso:

http://science.nasa.gov/missions/sage-3-iss/

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/calipso/mission/index.html

What is a rainforest?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainforest

Good Satellites:

http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/detect/global-temps.shtml

Noaa does the weather forecast:

http://weatherservice.co/us/1/

Conversion on the web:

http://fahrenheittocelsius.com/

Observation Sheets:

http://science-edu.larc.nasa.gov/skycolor/

New Education Options:

www.waterbuddy.org

www.kidsfirst.la

www.greatnonprofit.org/neweducationoptions   (91423)

Watch us on kidsfirst.la (videos) or on Teachers Tube.

You can give to the Fidelity DAF program to support STEM programs that utilize the Arts to teach kids to succeed at school through reading and vocabulary development