Earth Systems and Changes from Educational Service District 123, provides professional learning resources for K-5 teachers around elementary Earth Science and Climate Science related standards content.

It also provides learning to assist in the development of classroom tasks: Claims, Evidence Reasoning, and Models and Explanations, that can be used formatively to elicit student ideas and to support changes in student thinking over time.

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You are preparing your family’s emergency kits in case there is a need to leave your home quickly, or stay in your home without electricity or water. You need to be able to create an emergency supply kit that includes a lightweight water filtration device that is low cost. This will provide you with clean water regardless of your water source.

In this project, you will gain knowledge of natural disaster preparedness through the Red Cross Pillowcase project. You will research and experiment with the water cycle to learn how water is naturally filtered. You will then design and build a water filtration device that could filter water in an emergency situation.

Phenomena: Flooded SchoolyardStorylineThis photograph was taken at an elementary school in Maryland after a severe Summer rainstorm.  The students are concerned about the impact of the increased rainfall in such a short period of time.PE Alignment:4-ESS2-1. Make observations and/or measurements to provide evidence of the effects of weathering or the rate of erosion by water, ice, wind or vegetation.4-ESS3-2. Generate and compare multiple solutions to reduce the impacts of natural Earth processes on humans. Image source:  "Spring Runoff" by Walking With Scissors at https://www.flickr.com/photos/15582597@N06/5636129904/ CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/)

Students learn how engineers construct buildings to withstand damage from earthquakes by building their own structures with toothpicks and marshmallows. Students test how earthquake-proof their buildings are by testing them on an earthquake simulated in a pan of Jell-O(TM).

Explore WWII and Astronaut survival kits, what they contained and culminates with students designing an emergency preparedness kit.

This parent guide supports the creation of an emergency preparedness kit for home along with how to create an entire emergency plan.

During this lesson, students will learn about emergency preparedness during World War I and the Apollo mission, equipping them to participate in a challenge to design their own kit.

NGSS unit addressing the following standards:4-LS1-14-ESS 3-2This 5E lesson guides students to answer the following questions:How do plants’ structure and function affect their survival?How do plants impact wildfires in Oregon?

You are part of the NASA design crew and your task is to design a suit to keep the human body safe from the hazards of deep space. Are you up to the challenge? This is an ADA compliant document.

Living and working in space presents many challenges for humans. Use this ADA Compliant student guide to explore what many of those challenges are as well as possible solutions.

While living in space can seem like nothing but exciting, astronauts encounter many physical, biological, and psychological hazards. Use this guide to explore more about living and working in space.

In this easy-to-do activity you will simulate the fluid shift felt by astronauts upon entering space.

Have you ever dreamed of becoming an astronaut? Use this slide show presentation as an introduction to the many challenges of living and working in space.

Living and working in space presents many challenges for humans. Use this student guide to explore what many of those challenges are as well as possible solutions.

Students explore how different materials (sand, gravel, lava rock) with different water contents on different slopes result in landslides of different severity. They measure the severity by how far the landslide debris extends into model houses placed in the flood plain. This activity is a small-scale model of a debris chute currently being used by engineers and scientists to study landslide characteristics. Much of this activity setup is the same as for the Survive That Tsunami activity in Lesson 5 of the Natural Disasters unit.

Students are introduced to natural disasters, and learn the difference between natural hazards and natural disasters. They discover the many types of natural hazards avalanche, earthquake, flood, forest fire, hurricane, landslide, thunderstorm, tornado, tsunami and volcano as well as specific examples of natural disasters. Students also explore why understanding these natural events is important to engineers and everyone's survival on our planet.

With the rate at which we are depleting the environment and all that it has to offer, nothing is going to be left to survive on. That is why it is important for the younger generation to know the current issues about our environment. In this way they would be able to save our environment.Not only that we would be able to make a change and make our environment a better place.

Warming oceans and melting landlocked ice caused by global climate change may result in rising sea levels. This rise in sea level combined with increased intensity and frequency of storms will produce storm surges that flood subways, highways, homes, and more. In this activity, visitors design and test adaptations to prepare for flooding caused by sea level rise.

Volcanic eruptions can produce large amounts of debris in the form of sediment. Volcanic sediment is a serious hazard that can flood river valleys, bury homes and wash out bridges and roads. In the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens, many billions of cubic meters of sediment flowed down from the mountain through the surrounding river valleys, which caused major flooding and damage to the homes of people living downstream.

In the “Sediment on the Move” storyline, fourth-grade students explore the hazards of volcanic sediment and solve the problem of managing these hazards. This robustly developed and problem-based learning unit supports teachers in creating a rigorous and rich experience for students through use of fully-developed teacher support resources (Google Slides for students ready to be used), rich media (videos, images, first-person narratives), and a plethora of engaging and 3-dimensional formative assessments.

Through various activities, scientific inquiry and exploration, students become acquainted with the size and scale of volcanic sediment as a long-term hazard for communities that live downstream of volcanoes. In this unit students design their own community and roleplay as city council members. Students collaborate with characters who model real-world career professionals (such as engineers, geologists and emergency managers) who help them design their own solutions to the problem of volcanic sediment. Through science, teamwork, and communication, students generate and compare multiple solutions to help their community be prepared for the hazards and challenges from volcanic sediment. At the end of the storyline, students create recommendations and design plans to share with other communities facing similar challenges.