A kinesthetic activity that challenges students to participate in a model that describes the fate of solar energy as it enters the Earth system. A good initial lesson for Earth’s energy budget, students unravel the benefits and limitations of their model.
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This story map lesson plan allows students to explore ocean circulation patterns as they relate to the world's ocean garbage patches using NASA ocean currents data. Students will investigate the forces that contribute to ocean circulation patterns, and how debris, especially plastics, travel from land to the garbage patches.
This story map lesson plan allows students to explore global phytoplankton distribution using chlorophyll concentration data in a 5 E-learning cycle. Students will investigate the processes that allow phytoplankton populations to thrive, as well as how their role in the carbon cycle impacts the other spheres of the Earth System.
In this activity, students will analyze past and future eclipse data and orbital models to determine why we don’t experience eclipses every month.
Students will investigate the role of clouds and their contribution (if any) to global warming. Working in cooperative groups, students will make a claim about the future role clouds will play in Earth’s Energy Budget if temperatures continue to increase.
Students review an animation of monthly average wind speed at 10 meters above the ocean surface for our global ocean to analyze the relationship between winds and ocean surface currents.
Students observe monthly images of changing vegetation patterns, looking for seasonal changes occurring throughout 2017. These data can be used by students to develop their own models of change.
In this mini lesson, students explore the relationship of chlorophyll and solar radiation by analyzing line graphs from the North Atlantic during 2016-2018.
Students examine the two time series images to determine the differences between seasonal ice melt over water versus land.
The activities in this guide will help students understand variations in environmental parameters by examining connections among different phenomena measured on local, regional and global scales.