Grade Level: 3-5,
6-8,
9-12
NASA visualizers take data – numbers, codes – and turn them into animations people can see and quickly understand.
List of all Hydrosphere Lesson Plans
Select a Sphere:
Select a Grade Band:
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
Air, Water, Land, & Life: A Global Perspective
Grade Level: 6-8,
9-12
In this activity, you will use an inexpensive spectrophotometer* to test how light at different visible wavelengths (blue, green, red) is transmitted, or absorbed, through four different colored water samples.
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,
9-12
Students use Phytopia: Exploration of the Marine Ecosystem, a computer-based tool, to investigate various phytoplankton species and topics relating to phytoplankton biology.
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.
Grade Level: 6-8,
9-12
In this experiment, students make a claim about the cause of ocean currents and then develop a model to explain the role of salinity 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.
