This activity introduces students to different forms of energy, energy transformations, energy storage, and the flow of energy through systems. Students learn that most energy can be traced back to nuclear fusion on the sun.

This activity produces a fluent choral reading of Our Big Home: An Earth Poem, by Linda Glaser, when cooperative student groups rehearse, conduct vocabulary word study, and perform for their 4th grade peers.

This assignment teaches students how to evaluate arguments concerning the maldistribution of environmental hazards, based on complex quantitative data.

This is a field investigation of how a natural system is organized and the interconnectedness of an ecosystem.

This online reference list provides links to nine local and national environmental organizations that have Web sites rich in valuable biodiversity information. Where possible, it includes the following information for each: details about the organization's mission, knowledge base, and activities; the type of support offered, including educational materials, resource libraries, and classes/workshops; and mailing address and contact information. In addition, links to four Web directories are provided, which in turn have links to dozens of other organizations.

Gallery walk activity that relies on students' prior knowledge of environmental issues as an introductory activity in a general education, large-lecture format environmental science class.

This online article, from the museum's Musings newsletter for educators, provides an introduction to environmental stewardship. It discusses Earth's rarity as a planet that supports life and the mounting evidence that indicates human activity is, indeed, altering global climate.

This long classroom activity introduces students to a climate modeling software. Students visualize how temperature and snow coverage might change over the next 100 years. They run a 'climate simulation' to establish a baseline for comparison, do a 'experimental' simulation and compare the results. Students will then choose a region of their own interest to explore and compare the results with those documented in the IPCC impact reports. Students will gain a greater understanding and appreciation of the process and power of climate modeling.

This activity is a field investigation where students find real-life examples of erosion in their school surroundings. Students will extend what they learned during stream table lessons about erosion, deposition, deltas, meandering streams, and dams.

This article aligns the concepts of Essential Principle 2 of the Climate Sciences to the K-5 content standards of the National Science Education Standards. The author also identifies common misconceptions about heat and the greenhouse gases effect and offers resources for assessing students' understanding of interactions among components of the Earth system. This article continues the examination of the climate sciences and climate literacy on which the online magazine Beyond Weather and the Water Cycle is structured.

Each issue of the free, online magazine Beyond Weather and the Water Cycle explores an essential principle of climate science and climate literacy with background information, lessons, activities, original stories, and more for the K-5 classroom. This article shows the alignment of these materials with the content standards of the National Science Education Standards.

This article identifies age-appropriate national science education content standards and curriculum connections for introducing complex concepts contained in Principle 7 of the Essential Principles of Climate Sciences. The principle describes consequences of climate changes on Earth systems and human lives. The content standards will help teachers determine appropriate topics for their students. A number of resources from the online magazine Beyond Weather and the Water Cycle are highlighted for their connection to the science curriculum in the early grades. In addition, the article identifies common misconceptions about weather and the water cycle often held by students.

These flow charts show carbon dioxide emissions for each state, the District of Columbia and the entire United States. Emissions are distinguished by energy source and end use.

This is a static visualization, referenced from a UNEP rapid response assessment report entitled In Dead Water, depicting the estimated contributions to sea-level rise from 1993 - 2003.

This is a semester-long jigsaw project in which students work in teams to explore the effects of energy resource development on local water resources, economics, and society. Students are presented with a contemporary energy resource development issue being debated in their community. They research the water, geological, economic, and social impact of the project, and then either defend or support the development proposal.

In this activity, students learn about the pros and cons of co-firing woody biomass fuels with coal to produce electricity.

In this adapted video segment, ZOOM guest Tommy takes us on a tour of the Florida Everglades. He describes what makes a wetland biome unique, including the soil, precipitation, and biodiversity.

In the first video segment, we analyze the population dynamics for a test-tube of cells that affect each others' likelihoods of replication when they collide. The particular example we use is a prisoner's dilemma, which has the almost paradoxical property that survival of the relatively most fit leads overall fitness to decrease. In the second video segment, we suggest that the population dynamics from the first segment can be related to an analysis that uses payoff matrices found in traditional game theory.

In this video scientists discuss possible rates of sea level rise, storms and resulting damage, rising temperatures and melting ice, and their collective effects on ecosystems.

This activity allows children to explore the effects of oil spills on birds.