List of all Earth as a System Lesson Plans

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Grade Level: 6-8, 9-12

Students will examine a 2014-2015 El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) event to identify relationships among sea surface height, sea surface temperature, precipitation, and wind vectors.

Grade Level: 6-8, 9-12

Students are introduced to the Earthrise phenomenon by seeing the Earth as the Apollo 8 astronauts viewed our home planet for the first time from the Moon.  They will analyze a time series of mapped plots of Earth science variables that NASA monitors to better understand the Earth

Grade Level: 9-12

This investigation is part of the NASA: Mission Geography Module "What are the causes and consequences of climate change?" that guides students through explorations in climatic variability and evidence for global climate change. 

Grade Level: 6-8, 9-12

This investigation introduces students to the significant environmental changes occurring around the world. The investigation uses NASA satellite images of Brazil to illustrate deforestation as one type of environmental change.

Grade Level: 6-8, 9-12

Students identify and classify kinds of land cover (such as vegetation, urban areas, water, and bare soil) in Landsat satellite images of Phoenix, Arizona taken in 1984 and 2018.

Grade Level: 6-8, 9-12

Students will analyze and interpret maps of the average net atmospheric radiation to compare the flow of energy from the Sun toward Earth in different months and for cloudy versus clear days. Students will draw conclusions and support them with evidence.

Grade Level: 3-5, 6-8, 9-12

This lesson is taken from NASA's Phytopia: Discovery of the Marine Ecosystem written in partnership with Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Science with funding from the National Science Foundation.

These NASA lessons support Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and three dimensional learning of the Earth System. These include activities where students interact with NASA maps, graphs, and datasets from the atmosphere, biosphere, cryosphere, geosphere, hydrosphere and the earth system.