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 analyzing real air-quality and greenhouse-gas data and arguing a human-driven trend apart from natural variation.
By the end of the Air, Atmosphere & Climate Change unit, a student should be able to:
Six criteria, each judged Not yet / Approaching / Mastered (Page 3).
Read an air-quality or CO₂ dataset; separate signal from noise.
The student argues a human-driven trend from the data (Page 4).
Dataset, plotted trend, and interpretation 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 data and defend the trend it shows. 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Atmosphere & warming | ||
| Troposphere | weather layer | Lowest layer, where weather happens; distinct from the stratosphere |
| Stratosphere | ozone-layer level | Holds the ozone layer; temperature rises with altitude here |
| Greenhouse effect | heat-trapping effect | Gases absorb and re-emit infrared — not the same as the ozone hole |
| Greenhouse gas | heat-trapping gas | CO₂, methane, water vapor; ranked by warming role, not amount alone |
| Trends & pollutants | ||
| Keeling curve | atmospheric CO₂ record | Shows both the annual rise and a seasonal saw-tooth |
| Carbon budget | carbon accounting | Sources vs sinks; human emissions tip the balance |
| Acid deposition | acid rain | Sulfur and nitrogen oxides from combustion — not the greenhouse effect |
| Criteria air pollutant | regulated pollutant / smog component | Ground-level ozone, particulates; distinct from stratospheric ozone |
| Criterion | Not yet | Approaching | Mastered |
|---|---|---|---|
| Atmospheric structure | Treats the atmosphere as one uniform blanket. | Names the layers but cannot say what distinguishes them. | Describes the troposphere, stratosphere, and their temperature and ozone profiles, and why the layering matters. |
| The greenhouse effect & greenhouse gases | Confuses the greenhouse effect with the ozone hole. | Names greenhouse gases but not how they trap heat. | Explains how greenhouse gases absorb and re-emit infrared, and ranks CO₂, methane, and water vapor by their role. |
| Carbon budget & the Keeling curve | Sees no trend in atmospheric CO₂. | Reads the Keeling curve’s rise but not its seasonal saw-tooth. | Reads the Keeling curve — both the annual rise and the seasonal cycle — and ties it to the carbon budget and human emissions. |
| Ozone, acid rain & air pollutants | Lumps every air problem together. | Names ozone depletion, acid rain, or smog but confuses their causes. | Separates stratospheric ozone loss, acid deposition, and criteria-pollutant smog by cause, and explains the mechanism of each. |
| Field technique (air-quality data analysis) | Cannot read an air-quality or CO₂ dataset. | Plots the data but cannot separate signal from noise. | Analyzes air-quality or greenhouse-gas data and distinguishes a human-driven trend from natural variation. |
| 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 signal vs noise: a rising graph isn’t mastery until the student separates the trend from the seasonal wiggle. Ask “which part of this is climate and which part is just 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 | Atmospheric structure | NY / Appr / Mast | |
| 2 | The greenhouse effect & greenhouse gases | NY / Appr / Mast | |
| 3 | Carbon budget & the Keeling curve | NY / Appr / Mast | |
| 4 | Ozone, acid rain & air pollutants | NY / Appr / Mast | |
| 5 | Field technique (air-quality data analysis) | 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.