Integrate the NGSS and CCSS ELA by using a cycle of science and ELA activities to help students learn about the flow of energy between photosynthesis and cellular respiration.

Radial growth characteristics of a high-elevation shrub species, sea buckthorn (Hippophae rhamnoides), were investigated at four sites in a river valley at altitudes ranging from 3,333 to 3,820 m a.s.l. close to the terminus of the July First Glacier in the western Qilian Mountains of northwestern China. Radial growth of the sea buckthorn was significantly and positively correlated with the mean monthly temperature in June of the current growing season. Based on the fact that fluctuations in the shrub’s radial growth and the glacier’s equilibrium-line altitude (ELA) are affected by climatic variables, a tree-ring width chronology of the four sites was used to reconstruct the ELA from 1950 to 2003. The resulting ELA model explained more than 55.3% of the variance in the ELA of the July First Glacier series. On a decadal time scale, the cumulative-departure curve of the reconstructed ELA series showed an increasing trend from the 1950s to the mid-1960s, followed by a descending trend from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s. The ELA appears to have remained stable from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s, but has displayed dramatic variations during the past decade.

Students with moderate/severe intellectual disabilities/autism have been underexposed to grade aligned ELA content. This session highlights research to guide participants practice in implementing meaningful grade aligned ELA content such as opinion writing, comprehension of fiction and nonfiction text, and student led research via technology for students with low incidence disabilities.

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A researched and standards-based program for secondary students learning language arts skills Product Features: Complements Teaching to Standards: English Language Arts Includes eight pieces of adapted literature with read-aloud function Features age-appropriate literature likeHoles and Number the Stars Provides vocabulary, prediction, and reading activity for each story Incorporates progress monitoring, constant time-delay procedure, and least intrusive prompting Also available as the Access Language Arts Software

We will combine hands-on science investigations with supporting literacy activities to help students conduct original research on animal behaviors and communicate their findings.

abstract: Desert Elementary is a suburban Phoenix K-5 school. The school has undergone a significant change in its approach to reading instruction due to the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) instructional shift of building knowledge through content rich nonfiction. Teachers implemented this shift in their classrooms through a 16-month professional development program called Students Talking for a Change (STFAC). This qualitative action research study explored how teacher perception of reading instruction was affected by this change in instructional practice. Data collection comprised of classroom observations, teacher interviews, planning artifacts, professional development session artifacts and student work in order to determine teacher understandings about reading comprehension and perception of classroom practice. Prior to the professional development, teachers understood reading comprehension to be answering questions correctly and acquiring skills dictated by a basal reader. The texts teachers once used to teach reading lacked topical coherence. As teachers learned how to integrate content into language arts through long-term planning and sustained exposure to a topic of study, teachers changed their understanding about reading instruction. The perception was that content, discussion and multiple interpretations were central components to comprehension. Further, planning documents evolved from student packets to unit plans based on social studies, science and literature. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Educational Leadership and Policy Studies 2017

Speculative realism/historical fantasy are labels coined by Stanford University’s Ramon Saldivar. Saldivar describes this genre as “a way of documenting things that have happened, or could happen” (the realist component), but warping realism into science fiction and fantasy, blending and bending the genres (Dickason). In his 2013 article “The Second Elevation of the Novel: Race, Form and the Postrace Aesthetic in Contemporary Narrative,” Ramon Saldivar brings an interesting perspective to how a new generation of authors have taken this genre and exposed utopia as fraud. He argues that as many writers (often members of minorities) seek to challenge the status quo and explore new territories with their prose, a new genre has been born from the utopian and dystopian schools- the genre he coins “speculative realism.” Implicit in his labelling of a new genre is the assumption that existing genres (created and nurtured by the dominant groups in society) are inadequate vehicles for the sort of work these authors seek to do, and in order to make their unique contributions, they have had to become pioneers in the field. Specifically, these authors have focused on utopian and dystopian worlds and have exposed the ruling class ideology hidden in the resolution. This new genre provides perfect material from which to draw texts that encourage students to grapple with the difficult concepts of how society should be organized, and what means might be required to achieve it. This project was developed with high school pedagogical practice in the forefront, therefore texts are chosen based on genre, grade level/interest, and thematic/ideological content. Within each group, the texts are chosen to highlight the deliberate indoctrination present within the current curriculum, and through comparison demonstrate how substituting speculative realist and historical fantasy for dystopian and historical fiction novels both educates and empowers students. In the dystopian genre, the commonly taught Lord of the Flies by William Golding is compared and contrasted with Octavia Butler’s Earthseed series. To explore novels based on history, The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd is contrasted with the historical fantasy The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead.

Canadian bitumen is mainly transported in a diluted form via pipeline and train, all posing a risk as they can lead to the release of diluted bitumen (dilbit) in the environment. In the summer of 2018, a collaborative large-scale field experiment was conducted at the International Institute for Sustainable Development - Experimental Lakes Area (IISD-ELA), a world-renowned aquatic research facility. The research objectives of the Boreal lake Oil Release Experiment by Additions to Limnocorrals (BOREAL) project were to understand the fate, behaviour, and potential toxic effects of dilbit in a freshwater Boreal lake to inform evidence-based management strategies for the transport of dilbit. A range of controlled dilbit spills was performed in seven 10 m diameter limnocorrals (~100,000 L of water) resulting in environmentally realistic dilbit:water dilutions ranging from 1:69,200 to 1:504, representing the upper half of the distribution of oil spill sizes in North America in the last decade. Additionally, two limnocorrals not treated with dilbit were studied as controls. This thesis identifies the bioaccumulating compounds derived from naturally weathered dilbit in adult giant floater mussels (Pyganodon grandis), to determine the rates at which they were accumulated and excreted. More specifically, the bioaccumulation potential and toxicokinetic parameters of polycyclic aromatic compounds (PACs) and various metals were assessed in mussels exposed ex situ for 41 days (25 days of exposure and 16 days of depuration) to water from the limnocorrals. These compounds have shown to be toxic, carcinogenic, and mutagenic to aquatic organisms. Mussels exposed to dilbit-contaminated water experienced significantly greater TPACs concentrations (0.40 – 0.90 µg L-1, n=12) compared to mussels from the Control (0.017 µg L-1, n=4). Furthermore, dilbit-contaminated water had a higher proportion of alkylated PACs compared to their parent counterpart, demonstrating petrogenic PAC profiles. We detected significantly greater TPACs concentrations in mussels exposed to dilbit-contaminated water (25.92 – 27.79 µg g-1, ww Lipid, n=9, at day 25 of the uptake phase) compared to mussels from the Control (average of 2.62 ± 1.95 µg g-1, ww Lipid; ±SD, n=17). Alkylated PACs represented 96.4 ± 1.8%, ±SD, n=12 of TPACs in mussels from dilbit-contaminated treatments at day 25 of the uptake phase, indicating the importance of conducting a more inclusive assessment of petrochemical mixtures as most studies only focus on parent PACs. From first-order one-compartment models derived from nonlinear curve fitting of the accumulation phase or sequential modelling method, uptake (0.66 – 24.65 L g-1 day-1, n=87) and depuration (0.012 – 0.37 day-1, n=87) kinetic rate constants, as well as bioconcentration factors (log values from 3.85 – 6.12 L kg-1, n=87) for the 29 PACs that bioaccumulated in mussels suggested that alkylated PACs have greater bioaccumulation potential compared to their parent PAC counterpart. Results from this study also demonstrated that giant floater mussels could be used to biomonitor PAC contamination following oil spills as PACs accumulated in mussel tissue and were still present following the 16 day depuration phase. The results of this study are the largest, most comprehensive set of toxicokinetic and bioaccumulation information of PACs (44 analytes) in freshwater mussels obtained to date. Metal contamination following the controlled dilbit spill was minimal, but mussels exposed to water contaminated with naturally weathered dilbit experienced elevated concentrations of dissolved zinc (30.26 – 38.26 µg L-1, n=12) compared to the mussels in the uncontaminated water (6.75 ± 3.31 µg L-1, n=4), surpassing the Canadian water quality guidelines for the protection of aquatic life. However, it is not clear if dilbit contamination caused elevated zinc concentrations in the water as other factors, such as limnocorral building materials and/or galvanized minnow traps used in the limnocorrals, could have contributed to zinc contamination. Nonetheless, giant floater mussels did not accumulate zinc in their tissues.