ABSTRACT
Students often struggle to learn science content when they are unable to see connections between how lessons are relevant to their everyday lives. This chapter presents an “image of the possible” that illustrates the power of integrating science and engineering practices, literacy, and place-based instruction in a way intended to increase students’ opportunities to make sense of scientific phenomena, while simultaneously increasing the amount of meaningful reading and writing in the classroom. The chapter highlights teaching approaches, including literacy strategies, engineering challenges, field trips, guest speakers, project boards, mapping evidence-based claims, informational text readings, and persuasive writing. These approaches are contextualized in an interdisciplinary unit on water.
