Classroom Activities

Students compare photographs of glaciers to observe how Alaskan glaciers have changed over the last century.

Drip Drop! is a music video intended to engage young people in a conversation about climate and water.

Align tree ring cores of different ages to build up a long timeline of past climate data in this hands-on activity.

Students investigate some of the ways carbon dioxide gets into and out of the atmosphere, and how this process affects our global climate.

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.

Elementary students learn about the climate zones of the world by interpreting graphs and identifying climate zones described in postcards.

Students use a deck of cards to model climate variability and longer-term trends in climate.

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 create a simple model to learn how a major volcanic eruption affects the atmosphere, and how the reduction in light to Earth’s surface contributes to climate change.

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 graphing activity, students investigate Oxygen-18 data from ice cores used to investigate past climate.

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.

Students review illustrations, maps, cross-sections, and graphs that tell a piece of the story about the effects of clouds on climate. They answer "True and False" questions about each visual and discuss what they take away from the information.

This teaching box provides resources related to the greenhouse effect.

This Greenhouse Gas Game enables students to interact with each other as they learn about the heat-trapping properties of greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change. They learn that human actions are altering the levels of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere. Teams explore how long it takes to reach the top of the Temperature Tracker based on human activity, with the winner taking the longest to reach the top of the Temperature Tracker.

Students investigate maps and data to learn where and when hurricanes form and how climate change may be affecting them.

Students receive data about tree ring records, solar activity, and volcanic eruptions during the Little Ice Age (AD 1350–1850). By comparing and contrasting time intervals when tree growth was at a minimum, solar activity was low, and major volcanic eruptions occurred, they draw conclusions about possible natural causes of climate change.

This hands-on inquiry activity allows students to explore how the color of materials that cover the Earth affects the amounts of sunlight it absorbs using a simple model.

Students make a model of glacier motion and then design an experiment to figure out what affects the speed of a glacier.

Students create and investigate a physical model to explore how the resolution of a mathematical model impacts model results.

Students play a dice game to explore the differences between direct and indirect evidence to gain an understanding of how indirect evidence of climate change can be interpreted. The activity concludes with a discussion about the various records made by humans and indirect evidence found in nature that can be studied to understand how climate has varied through time.

Students examine "pollen" in simulated lake bottom sediment core samples to infer past climate in the vicinity of the lake.

Students analyze the energy consumption of a household appliance and estimate the amount of carbon dioxide it is adding to the atmosphere each year.

Students interpret model data through a climate simulation using sounds and visuals to make a forecast of climate change and changes to Arctic sea ice over this century.

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 investigate how thermal expansion of seawater impacts sea level.

Students observe tree rings in a tree cross section sample and analyze tree ring data to interpret paleoclimate conditions. 

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