Digital Teaching Boxes

Air pollution takes many forms - from particles of soot large enough to see, to individual molecules of ozone and nitrogen oxides. Air quality measurements let people know when the amounts of pollutants pose a health risk. This teaching box is filled with educational resources that help students explore the science of, and solutions to, air pollution.

Recent climate change is already having impacts - from melting Arctic sea ice and glaciers, to the lack of rainfall in the southwest and central United States, and the impacts of sea level rise on coasts worldwide. This teaching box is filled with explorations and readings that help secondary students learn how climate change is affecting the water cycle.

Clouds are both universal and mysterious. The science of clouds helps students feel closer to the sky and in awe of nature as they learn elementary concepts of physics, the water cycle, and atmospheric science. Explore the educational resources in this teaching box and bring cloud science to your elementary students.

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.

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.

Flash floods happen when quick and heavy rainfall causes placid waterways to turn into raging torrents. This teaching box is filled with explorations and readings that help secondary students learn the science of flash flooding. Students will learn that storms with unusually heavy rainfall can cause a flood, that the shape of the land and the ability of the ground to hold water influences whether a flood is likely, and they will learn how flash flood risk and probability is assessed. Get your feet wet by bringing the science of flash floods.

This teaching box provides resources related to the greenhouse effect.

Students will learn how the COSMIC satellites collect data about the atmosphere by measuring bending radio waves. Electromagnetic radiation, including light and radio waves, bends when it passes through substances with different densities. The amount of bending of radio waves beamed from one satellite to another allows scientists to measure traits of the atmosphere, such as temperature, pressure, and humidity, at different heights.

This Teaching Box will help your students learn to identify features of the Sun using images with "light" from different regions of the electromagnetic spectrum. Many solar features play roles in the eruption of space weather storms, so knowledge of these features is a prerequisite for understanding and predicting space weather events.

Welcome to Teaching With Drones, a collection of activities that get students using drones to learn about engineering and technology.

Tornadoes, also called twisters, are rare and powerful weather events in which columns of air rotate dangerously fast. In this teaching box are resources to help students learn why and where tornadoes happen and how these weather events impact people’s lives.

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.

Winter weather may cancel school, but it’s also an opportunity to learn science. This teaching box is filled with hands-on activities that get primary grade students to learn the science of winter weather including concepts of earth science. Explore the educational resources in this teaching box and bring snow and ice into your classroom!