You are here
Home ›Now showing results 1-17 of 17
This toolkit was designed to help presenters - particularly scientists and engineers - easily present to elementary and middle school audiences and feel confident that the information they are presenting is developmentally-appropriate. The site... (View More) includes PowerPoint presentations on Earth's water cycle, with talking points and suggestions. Best practices are also included for elementary and middle school presentations that provide helpful suggestions before, during, and after the presentation, as well as a list of additional resources. (View Less)
In this activity, participants learn about the atmosphere by making observations and taking measurements. They will go outside and use scientific equipment to collect atmospheric moisture data (temperature, relative humidity, precipitation and cloud... (View More) cover). Students will use this qualitative and quantitative data to understand how water is found in the atmosphere, how the atmosphere determines weather and climate, and how Earth’s spheres are connected through the water cycle. The data collection is based on protocols from the GLOBE program. This activity uses the 5E instructional model and is part of the "Survivor Earth" series of one-hour lessons. (View Less)
Materials Cost: $1 - $5 per group of students
This resource is designed to enable presenters (scientists, engineers, etc.) to easily present to an elementary and/or middle school audience and feel confident that the information they are presenting is developmentally appropriate and supports the... (View More) Next Generation Science Standards. A PowerPoint Presentation includes talking points and suggestions, a “Best Practices” document to offer helpful suggestion before, during, and after the presentation, and a list of additional resources that may be accessed by the speaker and/or the educator. This presentation is designed to take 30 to 45 minutes. (View Less)
In this activity, participants learn about the geosphere by making observations and taking measurements. They will go outside and use scientific equipment to investigate water in the soil by measuring soil moisture, temperature, color and... (View More) consistency. Students will use this qualitative and quantitative data to understand how water is found in many places in the natural environment and how these places are connected in the water cycle. The data collection is based on protocols from the GLOBE program. This activity uses the 5E instructional model and is part of the "Survivor Earth" series of one-hour lessons. (View Less)
Materials Cost: $1 - $5 per group of students
This activity is a short engineering design challenge to be completed by individual students or small teams. A real-world problem is presented, designing buildings for hurricane-prone areas, but in a simulated way that works in a classroom, after... (View More) school club, or informal education setting. Students are given simple materials and design requirements, and must plan and build a tower as tall as possible that will hold up a tennis ball while resisting the force of wind from a fan. After the towers are built, the group comes together to test them. If there is time after testing, which can be observational or framed as a contest between teams, students can redesign their towers to improve their performance, or simply discuss what worked well and what didn’t in their designs. (View Less)
Materials Cost: $1 - $5 per group of students
In this activity, students face an engineering challenge based on real-world applications. They are tasked with developing a tool they can use to measure the amount of rain that falls each day. Students will find out why freshwater is important,... (View More) learn about the water cycle, and the need to have a standard form of calibration for measurement tools. They will learn that keeping track of precipitation is important, and learn a little bit about how NASA's GPM satellite measures precipitation from space. This lesson uses the 5-E instructional model. (View Less)
This lesson was developed to give participants an understanding of Earth's water cycle. In this one-hour long activity, students participate in a webquest to learn about the water cycle, and then build a mini-model of the water cycle to observe how... (View More) water moves through Earth's four systems. The activity uses the 5E instructional model and is part of the "Survivor Earth" series of one-hour lessons. (View Less)
Materials Cost: 1 cent - $1 per group of students
Water is essential to Earth's living system, the biosphere. In this lesson, students determine the types of living things within an outdoor study site, use a taxonomic key to determine the predominant land cover type of their site, then predict the... (View More) amount of water present. Data collection is based on protocols from the GLOBE program. This activity uses the 5E instructional model and is part of the "Survivor Earth" series of one-hour lessons. (View Less)
Materials Cost: 1 cent - $1 per group of students
In this activity, participants learn about the hydrosphere by making observations and taking measurements. They will go outside and use scientific equipment to investigate temperature, pH and transparency of a body of water. They will use this... (View More) qualitative and quantitative data to understand why it is important to know about the condition of freshwater sources in many places in the natural environment and how these places are connected in the water cycle. Data collection is based on protocols from The GLOBE Program. This activity uses the 5E instructional model and is part of the "Survivor Earth" series of one-hour lessons. (View Less)
Materials Cost: $1 - $5 per group of students
This activity was developed to get students thinking about the many ways that people use freshwater and how we can conserve this precious and fundamental natural resource. Students will watch a short documentary describing issues related to clean... (View More) water availability, analyze water-use data and start to think about how they consume and can conserve water. This background knowledge will lead to students collecting data about their own water use and finding areas in their lives to conserve water. This activity uses the 5E instructional model and is part of the "Survivor Earth" series of one-hour lessons. (View Less)
This is the culminating lesson in the MMS Mission Educator's Instructional Guide. Learners will choose and complete three activities about the MMS mission. Activity formats can include creating videos, composing songs, developing written materials,... (View More) constructing models, investigating current events, utilizing mathematics to explain concepts, and more. Depending on the project(s) chosen by a student, the activity may require student access to internet accessible computers. The MMS Mission Educator's Instructional Guide uses examples from the mission to introduce mathematics (focusing on geometry) in a real-world context. The lessons use the 5E instructional cycle. Note: MMS launched March 12, 2015. For the latest science and news, visit the MMS Mission Website under Related & Supplemental Resources (right side of this page). (View Less)
The images and information in the slide show presentation are designed to give learners a better understanding of how ancient cultures observed and interpreted the apparent motions of the Sun in the sky, as well as modern studies of the Sun using... (View More) telescopes and spacecraft. It was originally designed to accompany a previous NASA-funded educational program, entitled The Sun in Time. (View Less)
This is a set of materials about spectroscopy, including a downloadable PowerPoint presentation and other related resources. Learners will read and/or hear about the science of spectroscopy, what a spectrum is, and how spectroscopy is important to... (View More) the study of stars. These resources can also accompany the Stanford Solar Center's Build Your Own Spectroscope activity (See Related & Supplemental Resources). (View Less)
This is a set of materials about spectroscopy, including a downloadable PowerPoint presentation and two demonstrations or activities. Learners will read and/or hear about the science of spectroscopy, what a spectrum is, and how spectroscopy is... (View More) important to the study of our Sun. These resources can also accompany the Stanford Solar Center's Build Your Own Spectroscope activity. (View Less)
This is a presentation about the Sun. Learners will hear about its cycles, as well as important features like solar flares, prominences, coronal mass ejections, and magnetic loops. They will also be introduced to the impact the Sun's activity has on... (View More) the Earth, including aurorae and potential issues surrounding global warming. This is a presentation intended for educators to use with an elementary school audience. Please note that this presentation is a large file and may require significant download time, depending on an individual's Internet connectivity. (View Less)
In preparation for analyzing student cloud observations taken as part of the S'COOL project, this tutorial, consisting of a 29-slide powerpoint, presents step-by-step instructions for selecting data, reviewing results, searching observations on... (View More) results, analyzing data on cloud cover, cloud layers and cloud levels, importing data into Excel, and analyzing that data. S'COOL engages students in making and reporting ground truth observations of clouds then comparing those observations with data from the CERES satellite instrument. The tutorial also includes information on how to analyze student/satellite pairs. (View Less)
This is an activity about spectroscopy. Learners will build a spectroscope and use it to observe various types of lights. This activity requires spectroscope kits and diffraction gratings available from the Stanford Solar Center... (View More) (http://solar-center.stanford.edu/posters/) and fluorescent and incandescent light sources. A variety of resources accompany this activity, including PowerPoint presentations, online videos, activities, and activity guides for both grades 2-4 and grades 5-8. (View Less)
Materials Cost: $5 - $10 per group of students