Browse K-12 Earth Systems Teaching Activities

Browse the collection of teaching activities and projects that explore Earth's systems, including the lithosphere, biosphere, atmosphere, cryosphere, and hydrosphere. You can refine your search by using the search box or selecting the terms on the right side of the page.



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Results 1 - 10 of 794 matches

Lesson 2: My Water Footprint (Middle School)
Kai Olson-Sawyer, GRACE Communications Foundation
This lesson centers on a deeper exploration of the water footprint associated with food. Students learned in Lesson 1 that virtual water, especially as it relates to food, typically makes up the majority of their ...

What's in the Water? Lesson 4: Drinking Water & Environmental Justice
Kelsey Bitting, Elon University
In this lesson from the "What's in the Water?" PFAS Contamination Unit", students explore equity in drinking water across the U.S. For homework, students read segments of two recent reports ...

Lesson 3: The Value of a Water Footprint (Middle School)
Kai Olson-Sawyer, GRACE Communications Foundation
Session 1 of this lesson begins with a quick activity to get students thinking about their direct and virtual water use. It introduces a few new ideas for virtual water use that may surprise students, including the ...

Engaging With Earthquake Hazard and Risk
Jennifer Pickering
This introductory activity engages learners in the study of earthquake hazards and the risk these hazards pose to humans in the communities in which we live. Learners will compare three maps of Anchorage, AK, depicting spatial information related to seismic hazards to generate questions about the factors that influence shaking intensity and damage to the built environment during earthquakes.

Plate Tectonics: GPS Data, Boundary Zones, and Earthquake Hazards
Christopher Berg, Orange Coast College; Beth Pratt-Sitaula, EarthScope; Julie Elliott, Michigan State University
Students work with high precision GPS data to explore how motion near a plate boundary is distributed over a larger region than the boundary line on the map. This allows them to investigate how earthquake hazard ...

Unit 2: Monitoring surface and groundwater supply in central and western US
Jonathan Harvey (Fort Lewis College) and Becca Walker (Mt San Antonio College)
In Unit 2, students learn how the techniques for water budgeting (covered in Unit 1) can be used to monitor both groundwater (High Plains Aquifer) and surface water (western mountain watershed) systems. Students ...

Detecting Cascadia's changing shape with GPS | Lessons on Plate Tectonics
Shelley E Olds, EarthScope Consortium
Research-grade Global Positioning Systems (GPS) allow students to deduce that Earth's crust is changing shape in measurable ways. From data gathered by EarthScope's Plate Boundary Observatory, students discover that the Pacific Northwest of the United States and coastal British Columbia — the Cascadia region - are geologically active: tectonic plates move and collide; they shift and buckle; continental crust deforms; regions warp; rocks crumple, bend, and will break.

Module 4 Polar Ecosystems
Jonathan Cohen, University of Delaware; Matthew Oliver, University of Delaware; Victoria E Simons, University of Delaware
This module follows logically from the previous and gives a biological context to sea ice. Students will review knowledge about seasonal trends in sea ice and learn how this impacts organisms that live in polar ...

Unit 3: Codorus Creek Case Study: Measuring and Interpreting Seismic Refraction Data
Using seismic refraction data in a case study for urban renewal. Andy Parsekian, University of Wyoming, aparseki@uwyo.edu Download a ZIP file of this Unit
This unit presents an applied case study example and the associated concepts related to designing a seismic survey and analyzing the data. It discusses parts of the instrument and presents practical experience ...

Let's Look Inside the Earth
David Zelenka
Students will analyze USGS seismology data in the classroom using spreadsheets and scatter plots to look for patterns and structure in the Earth's crust. Before analyzing data, students will learn about the ...