List of all Hydrosphere Lesson Plans

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Grade Level: 6-8

In this lesson, students will investigate the drivers of climate change, including adding carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, sea level rise, and the effect of decreasing sea ice on temperatures.

Grade Level: 3-5, 6-8

This activity invites students to simulate and observe the different effects on sea level from melting sea-ice.

Grade Level: 3-5, 6-8

This activity invites students to model and observe the effect of melting ice sheets (from land) on sea level and the difference between the effect of melting sea-ice to that of melting land ice on sea level.

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.

Grade Level: 3-5, 6-8

In this lesson, students investigate and identify various phytoplankton using images that were previously taken with a compound microscope.  Credit:  This lesson is modified from a lesson of the same name created by The Center for Microbial Oceanography: Research and Education&nbsp

Grade Level: 6-8, 9-12

In this activity, students make a claim about the cause of ocean currents and then develop a model to explain the role of temperature and density in deep ocean currents.  This lesson is modified from "Visit to an Ocean Planet" Caltech and NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

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.