The Anchoring Phenomenon Routine is the launch to student investigation around the anchoring phenomenon. This phenomenon will be the one that students will describe and explain, using disciplinary core ideas, science and engineering practices and crosscutting concepts in investigations. The Anchoring Phenomenon Routine will encourage thoughtful consideration of the phenomenon, initial models, connections to related phenomenon, discussions about the phenomenon and the creation of the KLEWS chart used for documenting student learning.
In an Anchoring Phenomenon Routine, ​students​:
● Are presented with a phenomenon or design problem
● Write and discuss what they notice and wonder about from the initial presentation
● Create and compare initial models of the phenomenon or problem
● Identify related experiences and knowledge that they could draw upon to explain the phenomenon or solve the problem
● Construct a KLEWS Chart
● Identify potential investigations to answer the questions on the KLEWS Chart, adding the questions to the chart

This short video describes how the compression of Antarctic snow into ice captures air from past atmospheres. It shows how ice cores are drilled from the Antarctic ice and prepared for shipment and subsequent analysis.

This lesson will introduce camouflage and adaptations, enabling students to be able to identify the importance of animals adapting in a changing climate. 

Animals are an important part of the ecosystem. They help to maintain the balance of nature by providing food for other animals, by pollinating plants, and by dispersing seeds. Animals are also important to humans, as they provide us with food, clothing, and companionship.However, animals are facing a number of threats, including habitat loss, climate change, and pollution. These threats are causing the decline of many animal species, and some species are even facing extinction.It is important to conserve animals and to protect their habitats so that future generations can enjoy them.

Animals are an important part of the ecosystem. They help to maintain the balance of nature by providing food for other animals, by pollinating plants, and by dispersing seeds. Animals are also important to humans, as they provide us with food, clothing, and companionship.However, animals are facing a number of threats, including habitat loss, climate change, and pollution. These threats are causing the decline of many animal species, and some species are even facing extinction.It is important to conserve animals and to protect their habitats so that future generations can enjoy them.

The extreme challenges of life in the polar regions require the animals who make their habitat there to make many adaptations. This unit explores the polar climate and how animals like reindeer, polar bears, penguins, sea life and even humans manage to survive there. It looks at the adaptations to physiological proceses, the environmental effects on diet, activity and fecundity, and contrasts the strategies of aquatic and land-based animals in surviving in this extreme habitat. This unit builds on and develops ideas from two other 'Animals at the extreme' units: The desert environment (S324_1) and Hibernation and torpor (S324_2).

Animal life has adapted to survive in the most unlikely and inhospitable habitats. This unit looks at the surprisingly diverse desert climates throughout the world and mammals, birds, lizards and amphibians that survive there. It splits these animals into three groups according to their strategy for survival: evaders, evaporators and endurers, then discusses how these strategies work on a biochemical and physiological level.

The world is driven by fossil fuels like oil and gas. This has some negative repercussions: Rising energy prices due to decreasing deposits, dependence on unstable oil and gas producing regimes and global warming.
It becomes clear, that a revolution in the way how we produce and use energy is necessary. Central to this energy transition are new technologies, which produce energy from renewable sources such as wind or sun.
With Germany as an example, this clip shows what renewable energies are and how they work as well as what the concept of energy transition means.

The clip is part of the WissensWerte Project of the german non-profit organization /e-politik.de/ e.V.

A team of middle school students in Baton Rouge research global warming and produce their take on the subject in this witty 30-second animated short

Students will create an animation to represent one of the many feedback loops that influences climate change. To create their animation, students will use clay, cut paper, whiteboard or other materials commonly found in the classroom. They will make a storyboard, plan a narration, rehearse their animation and then film their animation with stop-motion photography.

(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 series of visualizations show the annual Arctic sea ice minimum from 1979 to 2015. The decrease in Arctic sea ice over time is shown in an animation and a graph plotted simultaneously, but can be parsed so that the change in sea ice area can be shown without the graph.

This video segment adapted from NOVA explains why ice sheets move. To find out how fast they move, scientists carve a tunnel through a glacier.

What would happen if a portion of the Antarctic Ice Sheet were to melt? This video segment adapted from NOVA uses animations to show the effect of a 6-meter sea-level rise on coastal cities across the world.

In this lesson, students explore the importance of albedo (or reflectivity) to penguins and the surfaces they inhabit and learn how penguin colonies may be mapped using satellites.

The Polar Rock Repository at the Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center offers no-cost Rock Boxes for use by educators in both schools and informal learning environments, such as libraries, scout groups, and Science Olympiad teams. Each box may be borrowed for one month and contains more than 30 representative samples (rocks, minerals, fossils), printed materials for student use (books, descriptions, etc), teacher materials (also available online), and tools to examine the samples. With few exceptions, all of the samples in the boxes were brought back from Antarctica over the past century by U.S. expeditions!
A virtual version of the Rock Box may be viewed here. In addition to 3D models of rock samples, high resolution photographs and descriptions are linked.

What happens when the ground under your feet is ice and it's moving? This video segment adapted from NOVA features some of the dangers faced by scientists conducting research in Antarctica.

This article describes a discovery of moss and ostracod fossils that led to a better understanding of Antarctica's climate history.

This short video examines the recent melting ice shelves in the Antarctica Peninsula; the potential collapse of West Antarctic ice shelf; and how global sea levels, coastal cities, and beaches would be affected.

This article includes links to expository text for students in grades K-1, 2-3, and 4-5 about the climate differences between the Arctic and Antarctica.

This video segment adapted from NOVA uses microwave images to reveal how sea ice doubles the size of Antarctica each winter. Rare footage shows how sea ice crushed the famous ship Endurance in 1914.