This activity introduces students to aspects of the atmosphere, biosphere, hydrosphere, and litho/geosphere and how they are interrelated. It is designed to promote an interest in authentic investigations of Earth using images acquired by astronauts as the hook.
Educational Resources - Search Tool
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 review a video that models the global impact of smoke from fires to develop an understanding of how models can be used to interpret and forecast phenomena in the Earth System.
This lesson introduces the Earth system science spheres through model making and discussion.
To help students articulate and integrate their existing knowledge about the air, water, soil, and living things by viewing them as interacting parts of a system
Use the Data Literacy Cube to guide students’ exploration of mapped data of the Earth System to enrich their observations and inferences. This is a flexible resource that may be used with a variety of mapped images. This activity requires a map of Earth data for students to evaluate.
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.
Hands-on demonstration of the El Niño Effect, trade winds, and upwelling provided by NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab.
This lesson plan provides some generic maps, graphs, and data tables for use with the Data Literacy Cube. Because it is a differentiated resource, this lesson plan is appropriate for multiple grade bands.