Students will practice the process of making claims, collecting evidence to support claims, and applying scientific reasoning to connect evidence to claims.

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.

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.

This lesson introduces the Earth system science spheres through model making and discussion.

Through guided inquiry, students will identify interactions of the four major scientific spheres on Earth: biosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere and geosphere. They will then identify how these systems are represented and interact in their classroom aquarium.

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 evalu