This article aligns the concepts of Essential Principle 2 of the Climate Sciences to the K-5 content standards of the National Science Education Standards. The author also identifies common misconceptions about heat and the greenhouse gases effect and offers resources for assessing students' understanding of interactions among components of the Earth system. This article continues the examination of the climate sciences and climate literacy on which the online magazine Beyond Weather and the Water Cycle is structured.

Each issue of the free, online magazine Beyond Weather and the Water Cycle explores an essential principle of climate science and climate literacy with background information, lessons, activities, original stories, and more for the K-5 classroom. This article shows the alignment of these materials with the content standards of the National Science Education Standards.

This article identifies age-appropriate national science education content standards and curriculum connections for introducing complex concepts contained in Principle 7 of the Essential Principles of Climate Sciences. The principle describes consequences of climate changes on Earth systems and human lives. The content standards will help teachers determine appropriate topics for their students. A number of resources from the online magazine Beyond Weather and the Water Cycle are highlighted for their connection to the science curriculum in the early grades. In addition, the article identifies common misconceptions about weather and the water cycle often held by students.

This short video and interactive assessment activity is designed to teach fourth graders about estimating measure by image: centimeters or meters?.

This short video and interactive assessment activity is designed to teach fifth graders about estimating the measure of objects by image: feet or inches?.

Students learn that buoyancy is responsible for making boats, hot air balloons and weather balloons float. They calculate whether or not a boat or balloon will float, and calculate the volume needed to make a balloon or boat of a certain mass float. Conduct the first day of the associated activity before conducting this lesson.

Franklin works with Laverne to create a budget for a job painting a room, in this video segment from TV 411.

This is a service-learning project for students in Geography 204 (Weather, Climate and Ecosystems). Students will assess prior estimates of carbon offsets associated with plant and soil biomass on their college campus; and as a result, they will understand the complexity of measuring the complex sources of carbon emissions and offsets; address the challenges of coordinating data collection and field measurement; and realize importance of estimation in public policy contexts.

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This short video and interactive assessment activity is designed to teach fourth graders about estimating measure by description - multiple choice.

Description here.

(Note: this resource was added to OER Commons as part of a batch upload of over 2,200 records. If you notice an issue with the quality of the metadata, please let us know by using the 'report' button and we will flag it for consideration.)

This math problem determines the areas of simple and complex planar figures using measurement of mass and proportional constructs. Materials are inexpensive or easily found (poster board, scissors, ruler, sharp pencil, right angle), but also requires use of an analytical balance (suggestions are provided for working with less precise weighing tools). This resource is from PUMAS - Practical Uses of Math and Science - a collection of brief examples created by scientists and engineers showing how math and science topics taught in K-12 classes have real world applications.

Harry estimates how long it will take him to get to the front of a long ticket line in this Cyberchase video segment.

The task is designed to show that random samples produce distributions of sample means that center at the population mean, and that the variation in the sample means will decrease noticeably as the sample size increases. Random sampling (like mixing names in a hat and drawing out a sample) is not a new idea to most students, although the terminology is likely to be new.

This short video and interactive assessment activity is designed to teach fifth graders about estimating the measure of items by description: inches, feet, or yards?.

We express the exponential function of an imaginary variable in terms of sine and cosine. The "complex exponentials" that result trace out a circle in the complex plane. Pointing to one of the positions in the complex plane, we obtain the identity exp(i pi) = -1.

In the first video segment, we introduce Euler's number by considering the problem of interest compounded continuously. After we obtain the power-series representation for exp(x), we explore its properties, in the next four video segments, to convince ourselves that exp(x) is literally an exponential function, meaning a number, approximately 2.71828, taken to the power x. In the final two segments, we present the natural logarithm and demonstrate that it is the anti-derivative of 1/x.

Explore the concept of evaporative cooling through a hands-on experiment. Use a wet cloth and fan to model an air-conditioner and use temperature and relative humidity sensors to collect data. Then digitally plot the data using graphs in the activity. In an optional extension, make your own modifications to improve the cooler's efficiency.

In the first video segment, we analyze the population dynamics for a test-tube of cells that affect each others' likelihoods of replication when they collide. The particular example we use is a prisoner's dilemma, which has the almost paradoxical property that survival of the relatively most fit leads overall fitness to decrease. In the second video segment, we suggest that the population dynamics from the first segment can be related to an analysis that uses payoff matrices found in traditional game theory.

The evolution of ideas is often ignored in the teaching of statistics. It is important to show students how definitions and formulas evolve. This activity describes a fairly straightforward activity of how measures of association can evolve.

As mentioned in the syllabus, we are using MS Excel for statistical analysis in our OER stats course. We have, therefore, created three templates, one for each of the three units that the course is divided into, in order to help students make necessary calculations. Creating templates was a necessary steps since students are not expected to know how to use Excel functions for statistics and these templates are to guide students into getting relevant stats for their data, such as average, median, histograms, etc. Each template is divided into separate spreadsheets according to the topics. These templates help cut down the tedious work of evaluating statics and help students focus more on the concepts and analyse the results.