This StoryMap 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. 

Students will synthesize information from maps that show population, concentrations of PM_2.5, and PM_2.5-attributable mortality across the globe in order to draw conclusions about the relationship between particulate pollution and human health. 

Students will analyze how surface (skin) temperatures vary across a community and determine what factors contribute to this variation. Students will describe how human activity can affect the local environment. 

Students will describe how the spread of COVID-19 is affected by population density and explain why patterns in the spread of COVID-19 are happening over time. 

The Earth System Satellite Images help students observe and analyze global Earth and environmental data, understand the relationship among different environmental variables, and explore how the data change seasonally and over longer timescales.  

The Earth System Satellite Images, along with the Data Literacy Cubes, helps the learner identify patterns in a specific image.  

This graphic organizer may be used to help students analyze the processes and components of Earth System phenomena.

In this StoryMap students will learn about what air pollution is, its environmental impact, the standards used to describe air quality as defined by the Clean Air Act, and the Earth System interactions that drive the transport of air pollution.

In Earth System Science, underling factors affecting observable phenomena can be difficult to identify and describe.  The Iceberg Diagram diagram uses the metaphor of an iceberg to demonstrate the idea of visible vs hidden as it relates to Earth science phenomena.  This teaching strategy helps students to see beyond the obvious and to develop their awareness of the underlying causes, relationships, and/or conditions that can contribute to phenomenological events. It also provides a framework for digging deeper into phenomena-driven lessons in Earth Science.

The Earth System Satellite Images, help the learner visualize how different Earth system variables change over time, establish cause and effect relationships for a specific variable, identify patterns, and determine relationships among variables over one year.