Classroom Activities

Air takes up space. It's only when air in the bottle escapes that more air is easily added!

Are you in a place where snow falls in winter? If so, try catching snowflakes. Then take a close look. Can you find two snowflakes that look alike?

This Teaching Box combines activities, data analysis, and discussion to help high school students consider how weather can affect clouds and how clouds can affect climate.

Students demonstrate their knowledge of interconnections between natural systems such as weather and climate and the built environment in which they live.

Students analyze and interpret data on a map of floodplains to assess risk of flooding inform decision-making that will mitigate the effects of flooding.

This Teaching Box combines readings and activities that utilize data to build student understanding of the changes that happen to the Pacific Ocean and atmosphere during an El Niño event.

In this activity, students gather information about atmospheric scientific field projects in order to understand how a research question about the Earth system can be answered by collecting data using many different research platforms and instruments.

GLOBE Weather is a five-week curriculum unit designed to help middle school students understand weather at local, regional, and global scales.

On May 20, 2013, a devastating tornado occurred in Moore, Oklahoma. How did the people of Moore work to rebuild their community?

Students investigate three decades of tornado data through an interactive Story Map from Esri.

In this activity, students observe how temperature changes can create a weather front, in particular how the mixing of warm and cold air can produce thunderstorms. Water, which behaves very similarly to air, and a density tank are used in this demonstration.

Using language arts, math, and measurement skills, elementary students explore rainfall data and learn how to measure precipitation through an interactive story. 

In this activity, students will analyze data sets that show how carbon dioxide varies through the atmosphere at different latitudes, altitudes, and different times of year.

Systems thinking is an important concept across the Earth sciences. In this game, students either are a part of a system or serve as scientists tasked with observing and making sense of the system moving in front of them.

Students read news articles about Hurricane Irene, present information with classmates, and construct a timeline to describe the hurricane’s story over time and across geographic area, exploring what happened, how people were affected, and how they reacted.

In this activity, students will build a model to simulate parts of the water cycle. They will be able to recognize and explain the essential elements of the water cycle.

Students explore the relationship between weather and climate by graphing weather temperature data and comparing with climate averages.

This Teaching Box combines activities that build middle school student understanding of how satellites help make weather forecasts more accurate through a combination of hands on activities, and analysis of real satellite data.

In this activity, students will compare stories about a weather event from different media sources and different perspectives.