Air, Water, Land, & Life: A Global Perspective

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. 

Explore and connect to hydrosphere protocols in GLOBE. Each protocol has related Earth System Data Explorer datasets identified as well.

Explore and connect to the GLOBE Air Quality protocol bundle. 

My NASA Data has recently released several new resources, StoryMaps, for use in educational settings.

This mini lesson engages students by watching a NASA video related to seasonal chlorophyll concentration as it relates to net radiation using NASA's Aqua satellite. Students will examine the model and answer the questions.

This video provides tips for teachers on helping students make sense of data to help them understand and work with data. It is based on the work of Kristin Hunter-Thomson of Dataspire.org and uses data from the My NASA Data Earth System Data Explorer.

Students identify patterns in chlorophyll concentration data to formulate their explanations of phytoplankton distribution. 

This video is a resource that can be used alongside any activity that involves creating and developing questions. While the video focuses on questions about trees, the basic principles are necessary for asking scientific questions. 

Students will explore the Nitrogen Cycle by modeling the movement of a nitrogen atom as it passes through the cycle. Students will stop in the different reservoirs along the way, answering questions about the processes that brought them to the different reservoirs.  

This lesson was based on an activity from UCAR Center for Science Education.