Science educators strive to engage students in authentic investigations that have students analyze data in order to derive meaning.  MND provides unlimited opportunities to engage students in data analysis using Earth System data. 

Students review Earth System phenomena that are affected by soil moisture.  They analyze and evaluate maps of seasonal global surface air temperature and soil moisture data from NASA satellites.

Educators, consider using the My NASA Data Literacy Cubes to guide students’ exploration of graphs, maps, and datasets to enrich their observations and inferences.

Use the Data Literacy Cubes to guide students’ exploration of data to enrich their observations and inferences.  This is a flexible resource that may be used with a variety of data, whether the data originates from students' investigations with personally-collected data or data that they have acc

MND recognizes the importance of data literacy, especially in the Earth Sciences because data are the foundation of science.  But what does data literacy look like?

Use the Data Literacy Cubes to guide students’ exploration of data to enrich their observations and inferences.  This is a flexible resource that may be used with a variety of graphical representations of data.  This activity requires a graph for students to evaluate. 

The purpose of this lesson is for students to compare data displays to determine which best answers the driving question. To do this they will evaluate the spread of the data and what the displays show.

Perceiving Earth as a system begins when we first feel warmth from sunshine or get wet standing in the rain.

Students analyze the relationship between sea surface topography and ocean surface currents by graphing sea height differences using data collected from NASA's TOPEX/Poseidon mission.

This activity is one of a series in the collection, The Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change activities.