• Identify some of the causes of pollution in their community and discuss how these types of pollution directly and indirectly affect them.
• Examine how the automobile industry and legislation are helping improve the air quality in california by reading and discussing “clearing the air in the land of smog.”
• Determine causes and effects of air pollution, as well as ways in which various groups are aiming to control it, by finding related web sites on the internet.
• Create informative posters about various air pollution topics using research from the internet.

• Discussion
• Project

• Other

• Technology standard 3- understands the relationships among science, technology, society, and the individual. Benchmarks: knows that scientific inquiry and technological design have similarities and differences; knows that science cannot answer all questions and technology cannot solve all human problems or meet all human needs; knows ways in which technology has influenced the course of history; knows that technology and science are reciprocal; knows ways in which technology and society influence one another
• Geography standard 8- understands the characteristics of ecosystems on earth’s surface. Benchmark: knows the potential impact of human activities within a given ecosystem on the carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen cycles
• Geography standard 14- understands how human actions modify the physical environment. Benchmarks: understands the environmental consequences of people changing the physical environment; understands the ways in which human-induced changes in the physical environment in one place can cause changes in other places; understands the ways in which technology influences the human capacity to modify the physical environment; understands the environmental consequences of both the unintended and intended outcomes of major technological changes in human history
• Geography standard 18- understands global development and environmental issues. Benchmarks: understands how the interaction between physical and human systems affects current conditions on earth; understands the possible impact that present conditions and patterns of consumption, production and population growth might have on the future spatial organization of earth; knows how the quality of environments in large cities can be improved; understands why different points of view exist regarding contemporary geographic issues
• Language arts standard 4- gathers and uses information for research purposes. Benchmarks: uses a variety of resource materials to gather information for research topics; determines the appropriateness of an information source for a research topic; organizes information and ideas from multiple sources in systematic ways
• Language arts standard 7- demonstrates competence in the general skills and strategies for reading a variety of informational texts. Benchmarks: applies reading skills and strategies to a variety of informational texts; summarizes and paraphrases complex, explicit hierarchic structures in informational texts; uses new information to adjust and extend personal knowledge base; seeks peer help to understand information; draws conclusions and makes inferences based on explicit and implicit information in texts; differentiates between fact and opinion in informational texts

 
Grades 9-12

• Technology standard 3- understands the relationships among science, technology, society, and the individual. Benchmarks: knows that science and technology are pursued for different purposes; knows ways in which social and economic forces influence which technologies will be developed and used; knows that alternatives, risks, costs, and benefits must be considered when deciding on proposals to introduce new technologies or to curtail existing ones; knows examples of advanced and emerging technologies
• Science standard 7- understands how species depend on one another and on the environment for survival.
  Benchmark: knows ways in which humans can modify ecosystems and cause irreversible effects
• Geography standard 8- understands the characteristics of ecosystems on earth’s surface. Benchmark: knows the effects of both physical and human changes in ecosystems
• Geography standard 14- understands how human actions modify the physical environment. Benchmark: understands the global impacts of human changes in the physical environment
• Geography standard 18- understands global development and environmental issues. Benchmarks: understands why policies should be designed to guide the useand management of earth’s resources and to reflect multiple points of view; understands contemporary issues in terms of earth’s physical and human systems
• Language arts standard 4- gathers and uses information for research purposes. Benchmarks: uses a variety of news sources to gather information for research topics; synthesizes a variety of types of visual information, including pictures and symbols, for research topics
• Language arts standard 7- demonstrates competence in the general skills and strategies for reading a variety of informational texts. Benchmarks: applies reading skills and strategies to a variety of informational texts; scans a passage to determine whether it contains relevant information; summarizes and paraphrases complex, implicit hierarchic structures in informational texts, including the relationships among the concepts and details in those structures; uses new information from texts to clarify or refine understanding of academic concepts; uses discussions with peers as a way of understanding information

• Student journals
• Paper
• Pens/pencils
• Classroom blackboard
• Copies of “clearing the air in the land of smog”