Every tool, dataset, instructional unit, and routine shared at the 2026 Design Summit, gathered in one place. Explore heat and ecohydrology data with your students, anchor instruction in local phenomena, and keep building with our community of teachers and scientists.
Instructional units, lessons, media literacy tools, and assessment resources for anchoring climate instruction in local phenomena, from full multi-week units to a single podcast episode that can spark tomorrow's discussion.
Developed in partnership by Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Birch Aquarium, and the San Diego Science Project, with the San Diego County Office of Education partnering on the biology unit. All three units integrate SoCal Heat Hub phenomena with Understanding Global Change.
Students investigate why some neighborhoods are hotter than others, using Land Surface Temperature and NDVI data as the anchoring phenomenon, then design evidence-based solutions for their own communities.
A chemistry unit anchored in the same Land Surface Temperature and NDVI phenomena, connecting energy, matter, and surface materials to the urban heat patterns students see in their region.
People, plants, and our planet. Students explore how organisms maintain stability in a warming world, linking homeostasis to extreme heat and ecosystem change.
Micro:bits bring computer science integration into climate education, letting students build their own environmental sensors and analyze the data they collect.
An SDSP initiative connecting physical computing with climate investigation. Start with the overview, then explore micro:bit lessons embedded in Cooler Communities and a high school extension for urban heat islands.
Curriculum that moves students from understanding climate problems to designing and acting on solutions in their own communities, aligned with California's standards and science framework.
A reviewed collection of lesson plans, labs, simulations, and other activities supporting the teaching of climate and energy literacy across grade levels.
Strategies and resources for helping students evaluate scientific claims and navigate science in the media.
A tool for recognizing the common techniques used to deny or distort climate science, so students can spot them in the wild.
An article for understanding how climate action gets delayed, naming the arguments that accept climate change is real but push action down the road.
Short, ready-to-use high school lessons from Birch Aquarium and San Diego Unified School District.
Lessons featured at the summit include Evapotranspiration, Atmospheric Rivers, and Stories in the Mud, easy entry points for bringing local climate phenomena into existing course sequences.
A climate change booklist supporting California's AB 285 climate education requirements.
Find the intersection of what you're good at, what brings you joy, and what work needs doing, a framework for charting your own role in climate action.
Short explainer videos about why greenhouse gases warm the planet, with versions ranging from under a minute to a deeper dive.
A living document of native trees, shrubs, and medicinal and food plants suited to a water-constrained environment.
Resources from the California Environmental Literacy Initiative supporting AB 285 climate education implementation.
A primer on what AB 285 requires and what it means for California classrooms.
How climate change connects to NGSS Performance Expectations, and how learning about climate change progresses across K-12 in the Next Generation Science Standards.
A curated collection of climate change curriculum resources spanning every grade band.
SDSP's performance tasks on the ATLAS platform, free to all California science educators, with teacher guides, rubrics, and implementation support.
Students analyze real climate data to understand neighborhood heat disparities, then apply Earth systems and engineering design thinking to propose cooler, more equitable community spaces.
Students examine how human-made surfaces and land use patterns shape local temperatures, connecting to active SoCal Heat Hub research at Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
The Understanding Global Change framework from UC Berkeley anchors the summit's instructional materials, giving students and teachers a shared language for modeling the connections between causes of change, how the Earth system works, and the changes we can measure. Start at ugc.berkeley.edu, then dig into the tools below.
The full UGC infographic with clickable resources for every icon in the framework, the fastest way to explore what each concept means.
The why, how, and what of Understanding Global Change, an orientation to the framework and the thinking behind it.
Instructional planning templates and example units and lessons showing how teachers have built UGC into their curriculum.
Make Earth system models using the app, for your students and for yourself.
Earth Scene posters, icon cards, and graphics with language support, ready to print for your classroom modeling work.
The full UGC icon sets, causes of global change, how the Earth system works, and measurable changes, in Google Slides format, including Everyday Language versions, ready for digital model building.
A playful way to build familiarity with Earth system processes and UGC vocabulary.
A card-sorting activity for connecting causes, processes, and measurable changes across the Earth system.
A Lucidspark template for making UGC models digitally, ideal for collaborative or remote model building.
Templates and guides for designing or modifying your own instructional units with UGC, codesigned with classroom teachers and informed by Ambitious Science Teaching and Next Gen Storylines.
The complete guide and process for integrating UGC into an instructional unit, from identifying standards and selecting an anchoring phenomenon to constructing exemplar models and sequencing lessons.
A blank template for organizing a coherent storyline around an anchoring phenomenon for an instructional unit with UGC.
A blank template for creating your own learning tracker, helping students record what they did, what they figured out, and how it connects to UGC throughout a unit.
These tools put real heat, vegetation, and atmospheric data in students' hands, supporting the kind of authentic data analysis at the heart of the summit's instructional approach.
An interactive map for exploring heat and ecohydrology data across Southern California. The companion blog post and short video explainer walk you through using the tool with students.
A StoryMap examining who is most vulnerable to extreme heat and why. Pairs with Dr. Yiqun Ma's research presentation on extreme heat and human health, the evolving science in a changing climate.
An interactive look at how tiny particles in the atmosphere reflect solar radiation and shape the energy balance that drives regional climate.
A visualization of global weather conditions forecast by supercomputers, updated every three hours, animating Earth system processes in real time. Check out atmospheric CO2 and winds at Earth's surface, then click "Earth" (lower left) to change variables.
A heat risk viewer combining temperature and vulnerability data into a single index, letting students compare heat risk across neighborhoods.
An ArcGIS experience examining how tree canopy, and the cooling it provides, is distributed across communities, connecting urban heat to questions of environmental equity.
Tools are only as powerful as the instruction around them. These routines give teachers concrete structures for supporting all students in analyzing and interpreting authentic data.
A step-by-step routine with handouts and slides, designed to pair with the Ecohydrology and Heat Explorer for exploring Land Surface Temperature and NDVI data with students.
Opportunities for youth leadership development, community building, collective action, and policy advocacy. These are fantastic youth-led programs with solid support, and participation can be applied toward the State Seal of Civic Engagement.
Stories and sessions from educators and partners taking action on extreme heat.
A California Environmental Literacy Initiative webinar on extreme heat impacts on children, highlighting how schools, districts, and community partners are taking action to keep students safe and supported. Tools and strategies are gathered in the slides.
Resources from the San Diego Heat and Human Health Summit, hosted by San Diego Pediatricians for Clean Air.