Week Twelve: Ice Sheets
The Cryosphere
Weeks 10, 11, and 12 make up a three-week cycle about ice sheets. Currently, you are in the Classroom Application week of the cycle.

This week you will develop cooperative activities that engage your students in understanding Earth as a system through analyzing the causes and effects of ice sheets. You also have the option of choosing a Local Event to focus your lesson. As usual you will use the resources listed below to develop your ideas, then submit them for your teammates to rate and for your instructor to grade.

Assignments:

Submit to the Portfolio in the Classroom your classroom application with a description of its relevance to students, connection to the curriculum, instructional strategy and assessment methods. Include a reflection on what and how you have learned about Earth System Science and this event as a result of this module

Suggested Activities for Your Students
Readings
Web Sites
Featured Data Connection
Opportunity for teachers to Publish

Suggested Activities for Your Students

Global Ice and Water Activities contains three activities that can provide learners with insight into the relationship between global ice and freshwater, and the relationship of global ice to sea level.

How can we map changes in water level? Students construct a contour map and describe how it can be used to study changes in water levels.

Soda Bottle Hydrology Activities designed to give students a better grasp of concepts relating to ground water, aquifers and hydrology.

Sea Ice - Just the Cold Facts
Students calculate seasonal changes in sea ice for the North and South Poles   http://eospso.gsfc.nasa.gov/eos_homepage/for_educators/cd_rom/supplement.php

You will want to locate other resources locally and on the Internet to supplement these. Post the resources you find in Resource Space in the Classroom.

Readings

State of the Cryosphere, is the cryosphere sending signals about climate change?
http://nsidc.org/sotc/sea_level.html

NASA Fact Sheet: Polar Ice Information from Goddard Space Flight Center's Information Gallery.

Tour of the Cryosphere.   http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/environment/cryosphere.html

Web Sites

Canadian Ice Service Homepage of the Meteorological Service of Canada.

ILT Publications See the readings on pedagogy and technology.

Featured Data Connection

MY NASA DATA is an effort to develop microsets of Earth science data that are interesting and useful for, K-12 education. The datasets can be used with existing curriculum and enable students to practice math skills using real measurements of Earth system variables and processes.

MY NASA DATA microsets are created using data from NASA Earth science satellite missions and provide information on the atmosphere, ocean and land surface. Data is easily-accessible online along with lesson plans, computer tools and an Earth science glossary. You can link to the MY NASA DATA Live Access Server (LAS) where you can select items (microsets of data) from the menu (list of datasets) using descriptions (parameters and time frames) of the items.

The LAS software allows access to scientific data referenced by latitude, longitude, and time. This is referred to as geo-referenced data. LAS can:

• show visualizations (color plots and graphs) of the data as requested
• provide subsets of the specific parameters in a choice of file formats   (e.g., as an excel file)
• present the numerical data collected

Opportunity for teachers to publish - Have you developed an original lesson plan using MY NASA DATA that worked well in your classroom? Please submit these lessons for review and possible publication on the MY NASA DATA website. Submit your original lessons to: essea@strategies.org .   Be sure to include your name, email and phone number.

Following is a suggested template for lesson plans using MY NASA DATA:

Week by Week ...Week One ...Week Two ...Week Three ...
Week Four ...Week Five ...Week Six ...Week Seven ...Week Eight ...
Week Nine ...Week Ten ...Week Eleven ...Week Twelve ...
Week Thirteen ...Week Fourteen ...Week Fifteen ...Week Sixteen ...

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