Jul 03, 2024

Media Mayhem Unit Awarded NGSS Design Badge

The Food and Agriculture Center for Science Education’s STEM unit, Media Mayhem, was recently awarded the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) Design Badge. The Media Mayhem unit is housed on the Food and Agriculture Center for Science Education website and is free for educators to download. The NGSS Design Badge is awarded to top-rated science units designed for the Next Generation Science Standards. 

The Media Mayhem unit focuses on conflicting media claims telling opposing views, which can be difficult for students to understand. In this high school 5E unit on the dairy food system and sustainability, students explore media claims about the impacts of the dairy sector on the environment to figure out which ones most accurately represent the body of science on the dairy sector’s impacts. Across a series of four modules, students figure out how the components of the dairy food system impact the environment, including pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, climate, and biodiversity. To conclude the unit, students use engineering design processes to evaluate multiple solutions to reduce the dairy sector’s environmental impact.

View the full unit here!