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Hello Data Puzzles Educators!

We hope you had a great summer and are navigating the chaos that is the first few weeks of school smoothly! It was great to get a chance to connect with many new and familiar faces this summer both in-person and virtually and we look forward to building this Data Puzzles community in the 2024-2025 school year! We've heard from many of you that you'd like to 1) learn more about our latest Data Puzzle lessons, and 2) connect your classrooms with the scientists featured in Data Puzzle resources. To accommodate these requests, we're going to try something new! At the beginning of each month, developer Jon Griffith with lead participants through a Data Puzzle lesson. These webinars are for MS/HS educators and will take place in the afternoon, after the school day has completed. Then, 3-ish weeks later, we'll be organizing a virtual classroom call (during the school day) with the scientist featured in the Data Puzzle lesson so that teachers and their students will be able to hear from and ask questions of the scientist directly. We hope this staggered approach will give teachers and their students time to engage with the Data Puzzle lesson prior to interacting with the featured scientist!  Register for these events below!!!

September 2024 Events

Data Puzzle Webinar: Wildfire, Drought, and the Future of Forests

September 4th from 4 pm - 5 pm MT

• WHO: Middle and High School Science Teachers
• WHAT: FREE virtual teacher workshop focused on the Data Puzzles instructional framework in the context of the Wildfire, Drought, and the Future of Forests Data Puzzle lesson. 
  • Participants will leave prepared to implement the lesson in their classrooms and receive a 1-hr PD certificate from the University of Colorado Boulder
• WHEN: Wednesday, September 4th from 4 pm - 5 pm MT
• WHERE: Virtual - Zoom link will be sent one week prior to the event

ABOUT THE LESSON: As wildfires continue to ravage the west, burning more and more of the landscape, many are left wondering, what happens next? Traditionally, we think of forests recovering after a disturbance (e.g., wildfire following a particular pattern (secondary succession). However, contemporary research from Dr. Camille Stevens-Rumann shows that fire-affected landscapes are struggling to recover to pre-fire conditions due to increasing drought and are transitioning to grasslands and shrublands. In this Data Puzzle, students analyze and interpret post-fire forest recovery datasets to identify and explain the relationship between drought and post-fire tree regeneration patterns in the Rocky Mountains.

Register for the Wildfire, Drought, and the Future of Forests Data Puzzle webinar today!

Science Show and Share with fire ecologist Dr. Camille Stevens-Rumann

September 24th from 10:30 am - 11:30 am MT

ABOUT: Connect your middle and high school classrooms with fire ecologist Dr. Camille Stevens-Rumann, the featured scientist in the Wildfire, Drought, and the Future of Forests Data Puzzle lesson, in this special classroom video call! Dr. Stevens-Rumann will discuss her past and present work in the US Rocky Mountains, including how climate change is making it harder for forests to grow back after wildfires. This webinar is perfect for middle and high school classrooms, especially those that have engaged with our Data Puzzle resources. Note that students are encouraged to asked questions throughout the webinar!

Register for this classroom call with Dr. Camille Stevens-Rumann!