This packet is everything a parent or guide needs to assess Unit 06 at home — learning targets, the answers that count as correct, the mastery rubric, calibration examples, and a clipboard score sheet. No multiple-choice test: the student shows mastery by reading a climate proxy and defending what its trend says about the past.
By the end of the Climate & Climate Change unit, a student should be able to:
Six criteria, each judged Not yet / Approaching / Mastered (Page 3).
Read an ice-core or tree-ring record; defend its trend.
The student reasons from the evidence aloud (Page 4).
The record, the trend, and the conclusion kept distinct.
You are making a decision, not adding up points. For each criterion, decide whether the work is Not yet, Approaching, or Mastered — the column language tells you which. A criterion counts as mastered only when the student can both read the record and justify the climate story behind it. A student carries three tokens per term; one token buys a re-do of one criterion on another day, so a single bad afternoon never sinks the unit.
Accept any answer in the synonyms column — they are pre-approved as equivalent. The third column flags the confusions that look close but are not yet, so you can coach precisely.
| Canonical answer | Accepted synonyms | Common confusion / discriminator |
|---|---|---|
| Climate & its drivers | ||
| Climate | long-term pattern | The decades-long average, not any single day's weather |
| Climate zone | climate region | Set by latitude, elevation, currents, and winds together |
| Greenhouse effect | heat-trapping | Keeps Earth livable; not the ozone hole, and not only harmful |
| Carbon & the record | ||
| Carbon cycle | carbon reservoirs | Carbon moves through ocean, atmosphere, rock, and life |
| Proxy | climate proxy | Ice cores, tree rings, sediment — indirect records of past climate |
| Ice core | glacial core | Trapped gas bubbles record past atmosphere and temperature |
| Keeling Curve | CO₂ record | The measured rise of atmospheric CO₂ since 1958 |
| Weather vs. climate | days vs. decades | A cold week is weather, not evidence against a warming climate |
| Criterion | Not yet | Approaching | Mastered |
|---|---|---|---|
| Weather vs. climate | Uses weather and climate interchangeably; a cold day disproves warming. | Says climate is long-term but still cites single events as proof either way. | Distinguishes weather (days) from climate (decades) and judges change from trends, not one season. |
| Climate zones & what sets them | Cannot say why one place is a desert and another a rainforest. | Names climate zones but not the factors — latitude, altitude, currents — that set them. | Explains how latitude, elevation, ocean currents, and winds combine to set a region's climate zone. |
| Greenhouse effect & the carbon cycle | Thinks the greenhouse effect is only harmful, or confuses it with the ozone hole. | Describes the greenhouse effect but cannot trace carbon through its reservoirs. | Explains how greenhouse gases trap heat and traces carbon through ocean, atmosphere, rock, and life. |
| Evidence for climate change | Treats climate change as opinion rather than something measured. | Names one proxy but cannot connect it to a record of past climate. | Reads ice-core, tree-ring, and CO₂ records as converging evidence of how climate has changed. |
| Lab technique (proxy data) | Cannot read a proxy graph or relate its axes to time and temperature. | Reads the trend but misinterprets the axes or the timescale. | Analyzes ice-core or tree-ring data and defends what its trend says about past climate. |
| Integration (cross-domain) | Treats the science as isolated facts; makes no cross-domain connection. | Names a link to history, reading, or writing but cannot defend why it matters. | Connects the unit to its anchor across History · Reading · Writing (plus chosen electives) and defends why the connection matters. |
The split between Approaching and Mastered is trend over events: not one hot year, but the pattern across decades. Ask “what does the record show over time, and how do you know it’s climate and not weather?”
Read these before you grade. They show what Mastered and Not yet actually sound like, plus the edge cases where you should coach rather than decide on the spot.
Student: ______________________________________ Date: _______________ Guide: _________________________
| # | Criterion | Decision | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Weather vs. climate | NY / Appr / Mast | |
| 2 | Climate zones & what sets them | NY / Appr / Mast | |
| 3 | Greenhouse effect & the carbon cycle | NY / Appr / Mast | |
| 4 | Evidence for climate change | NY / Appr / Mast | |
| 5 | Lab technique (proxy data) | NY / Appr / Mast | |
| 6 | Integration (cross-domain) | NY / Appr / Mast |
☐ No ☐ Yes — for criterion: __________ Tokens remaining: ☐ 3 ☐ 2 ☐ 1 ☐ 0
NY = Not yet · Appr = Approaching · Mast = Mastered · Unsure between two levels? Circle the lower one and note what a re-do would need.