While there is consensus in the science education community on the importance of crosscutting concepts (CCCs) for all students, teachers have been given limited guidance on how to integrate CCCs into science instruction. In this article, the authors propose that teachers view CCCs as resources that students use in their everyday lives to make sense of the world and bring to the science classroom to help make sense of phenomena. When CCCs are viewed as resources that students come to school with and not just as outcomes of instruction, teachers can capitalize and build on students' everyday experiences. This view of CCCs as resources is especially important for diverse student groups, who have been traditionally marginalized in science education and who may not see science as real or relevant to their lives or future careers. The authors provide classroom vignettes of how a teacher integrated two CCCs into science instruction: (1) patterns and (2) systems and system models. The context for the two vignettes is a physical science unit anchored in the local phenomenon of garbage.