Earth System Science Unit Labs
Provided by: TERC|Published on: May 24, 2024|Last updated: September 26, 2026
Grades: 9, 10, 11, 12
Type: Lesson Plans
Subjects: Biology, Earth and Space Sciences
Authors: TERC and Science Education Resource Center at Carleton College (SERC)
Location: North America > United States
This resource has been reviewed by SubjectToClimate's climate scientists and verified for scientific accuracy and up-to-date information. Learn about our review process →
This resource has been reviewed by SubjectToClimate's climate scientists and verified for scientific accuracy and up-to-date information. Learn about our review process →
Synopsis
- This series of six student labs explores global systems and the connections and interactions between water, land, air, and life on local, regional, and global scales.
- Students will explore and annotate a local area, understand how this area fits within the larger region, differentiate between open and closed systems, simulate system interactions, and look at data from the interacting systems.
Teaching Materials
Positives
- The hands-on activities dealing with a local study site help students stay focused and engaged.
- The resource does a great job of defining unknown terms for students.
Prerequisites
- To access educator-only materials, such as suggested answers for the questions, teachers will need to enter their email and complete a short form.
- Students should understand the water cycle.
- Students will need an internet connection.
- In Lab 4, students should skip Part C, as it is a repeat of Lab 3's Part C.
- The link to the Water Cycle Game in Lab 5 takes the user to a different landing page in NOAA. Teachers can use this water cycle board game from NOAA.
Differentiation & Implementation
- If students are not in a natural area, can't travel to one, or it is too hot or cold to be outside, they can use a virtual tour video of a nearby natural space and make observations about what is present there. Many of these are available on YouTube.
- Art students can make artistic representations of the atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, or pedosphere using a medium of their choice.
- During the annotation activity in the second lab, teachers may want to direct students with large handwriting to put numbers on their photos corresponding to annotations on a separate page right away to avoid frustration and make it easy for all students to read all annotations.
- Teachers can connect the global cycling of water and air to pollution and how polluting one watershed can create impacts on a global scale.
- To make language arts connections, teachers can follow Lab 5 where students see the Blue Marble image of earth with this poetry lesson based on Amanda Gorman's poem inspired by the Earthrise image of earth.
This lesson plan contains six labs to teach students about the Earth's systems and its four major components: the atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, and pedosphere. The labs range from local to global scale. These are a great introduction to many Earth system concepts such as energy, ocean, and atmosphere circulations, weather, vegetation, etc. The lesson plan includes activities, references, worksheets, and answer sheets. While the lesson plan is older, the information presented is fundamental knowledge, so the lessons will remain relevant. The information presented is accurate, and this resource is recommended for teaching.
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Resource Type and Format
Scientist Reviewed
This resource has been reviewed by SubjectToClimate's climate scientists and verified for scientific accuracy and up-to-date information. Our review process ensures that every resource in our library reflects the current state of climate science.
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