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)

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)

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)

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)

The emphasis of this lesson is deepening students' understanding of how and why we measure precipitation across the globe. Students will look at NASA Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) data gathered during hurricanes and how this data can... (View More) prove essential in helping scientists forecast the amount of precipitation. Students will also learn how the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Mission is enabling scientists to collect new information on hurricanes. The lesson uses the 5E instructional sequence. (View Less)

Students begin by determining dew point using an aluminum can, stirring rod, ice and thermometer. Air temperature is also measured and recorded. Students then use those two data in conjunction with the Lifting Condensation Level approximation, to... (View More) estimate the base altitude of visible (low level) clouds. The Students' Cloud Observations On-Line (S'COOL) project engages students in making and reporting ground truth observations of clouds then comparing those observations with data from the CERES satellite instrument. (View Less)