Students discuss their current understanding of what Earth systems are and how they work and consider how to identify the boundaries of a region for Earth system study.

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.  

By investigating the data presented in a model that displays extreme summer air temperatures, students explain energy transfer in the Earth system and consider the impact of excessive heat on local communities.

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 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.

In this activity students will calculate the ratio of the size of the sun to the moon and the distance of the sun and moon from Earth to determine the type of solar eclipse possible.

In this activity students will make observations about the objects, size, distance, and motion of the Sun, Earth, and Moon during a solar eclipse and manipulate slides to show the relationships.

In this story map lesson students will learn how living with a star can teach us about our universe. Through a series of learning activities, students will examine the benefits and hazards of living with a star, describe and/or demonstrate how we use eclipses to study the Sun and its features, and investigate how our Sun may be used to learn about other stars and our universe. 

In this activity, students will model  the geometry of solar eclipses by plotting a few points on a piece of graph paper, and using quarters and a nickel to represent the Sun and Moon (not to scale). 

This lesson, "Awenasa Goes to Camp!," is a data analysis activity that presents maps of NASA Earth satellite data for a variety of locations across the United States for four unidentified months throughout the year.  Each location represents a real science camp th