This story map lesson plan allows students to explore ocean circulation patterns as they relate to the world's ocean garbage patches using NASA ocean currents data.

This story map 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 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. 

This content has been moved. You can find it under Creation of Urban Heat Islands Story Map link.

Students will identify and describe the relationship between land cover classification and surface temperature as they relate to the urban heat island effect. Students will also describe patterns between population density and the locations of urban heat islands. 

Students will engage in a “Zoom In Inquiry” learning routine to understand a world map that shows changes in PM_2.5-attributable mortality per 100,000 population (Bondie, 2013).

Students interpret AQI maps and charts to compare today’s AQI with the past five days. Using the EPA’s air quality activity guides, students create a social media post for residents of their region providing key information related to today’s AQI.

In this 5E’s lesson, students observe maps that show smoke and AOD levels surrounding Fresno, California at the time when the 2020 Creek Fire was burning.

Students synthesize information from My NASA Data maps and texts from the EPA website to determine how levels of criteria pollutants have changed from 2005 to 2021.