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 Lesson Plan provides some generic maps, graphs, and data tables for use with the Data Literacy Cubes. Because it is a differentiated resource, this Lesson Plan is appropriate for multiple grade bands.
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.
Students consider the impact of changing conditions on the remote island of Little Diomede, Alaska after they investigate the relationship between seasonal trends in sea ice extent with shortwave and longwave radiation flux described in Earth’s energy budget.
Students construct explanations about Earth’s energy budget by connecting a model with observations from side-by-side animations of the monthly mapped data showing incoming and outgoing shortwave radiation from Earth’s surface.
Students analyze map visualizations representing the amount of Sun’s energy received on the Earth as indicated by the amount that is reflected back to space, known as “albedo”.
Students move through a series of short activities to explore and evaluate global solar radiation data from NASA satellites. In this process, students make qualitative and quantitative observations about seasonal variations in net energy input to the Earth System.