K-8: Science

New Resources Coming Soon!!!

 

To help your students understand and explore similarities and differences between modern animals and extinct fossil species, consider incorporating the following resource into your lesson plans:

 

To help your students understand some of the natural and human influences on the Earth’s atmosphere, consider incorporating some of the following resources from NASA’s climate website into your lesson plans:

    • Video: Temperature Puzzle
      • A 5 minute video from NASA Earth Science which uses satellite imagery and other easy-to-understand visualizations to demonstrate the ways that the sun’s energy, Earth’s reflectance and both natural and man-made greenhouse gasses influence global temperatures.
    • Video: How global warming stacks up
      • A quick (~3 min) graphical demonstration of the relationships between natural factors, human activities, and rising global temperatures since 1880 AD. This would make an excellent companion video to the Temperature Puzzle video described above.
    • Video: Seasonal changes in carbon dioxide
      • A ~1 minute video visualizing and explaining the influence of seasonal plant photosynthesis and decay cycles on monthly atmospheric carbon dioxide trends across the globe.
    • Interactive Activity: Climate time machine
      • An interactive activity allowing students to explore how temperature, sea ice extent, and carbon dioxide concentrations have changed across the globe in recent history.

 

Resources for understanding fossils, the geologic record and the age of the earth:

    • Video: How Do Fossils Form
      • This 3 minute animated video explains what fossils are and how they form.
    • Video: What can fossil teeth tell us
      • In this 2 minute video, paleontologist Neil Shubin explains how we can understand the diets, habitats, and biology of ancient animals based on the shape of their fossilized teeth.
    • Video: Stratigraphic Principles
      • In this 2 minute video, anthropologist John Shea demonstrates two of the main geological/stratigraphic principles (superposition and association) which help us study and understand earth’s history and determine the age of fossils.
    • Video: Cake and Stratigraphy
      • In this 3 minute video, Jason Jett from the Rocky Mountain Dinosaur Resource Center in Colorado uses cake batter and dinosaur figurines to demonstrate how the law of superposition can help us figure out the age of fossils.
    • Video: Floods Supply Sediments for Fossil Formation
      • In this 3 minute video, paleoanthropologist Tim White uses fieldwork photos and videos from the African Rift Valley to illustrate how flooding spreads silt and sediment across floodplains and creates conditions favorable to fossil formation:
    • Video: How does radiocarbon dating work
      • In this 2 minute video from Scientific American, Michael Moyer explains how scientists use radiocarbon dating to determine the age of fossils.
    • Video: How to date a planet
      • In this 3 minute video, Henry Reich explains how scientists have used radioactive dating techniques to figure out that the earth is at least 4.4 billion years old.
      • For slightly more context, see this short explanation from Ask Smithsonian

 

The following resources for understanding fossils, the geologic record and the age of the earth may help to explain how fossils indicate Earth’s history, environment changes and life on Earth:

    • Video: How Do Fossils Form
      • This 3 minute animated video explains what fossils are and how they form.
    • Video: What can fossil teeth tell us
      • In this 2 minute video, paleontologist Neil Shubin explains how we can understand the diets, habitats, and biology of ancient animals based on the shape of their fossilized teeth.
    • Video: Stratigraphic Principles
      • In this 2 minute video, anthropologist John Shea demonstrates two of the main geological/stratigraphic principles (superposition and association) which help us study and understand earth’s history and determine the age of fossils.
    • Video: Cake and Stratigraphy
      • In this 3 minute video, Jason Jett from the Rocky Mountain Dinosaur Resource Center in Colorado uses cake batter and dinosaur figurines to demonstrate how the law of superposition can help us figure out the age of fossils.
    • Video: Floods Supply Sediments for Fossil Formation
      • In this 3 minute video, paleoanthropologist Tim White uses fieldwork photos and videos from the African Rift Valley to illustrate how flooding spreads silt and sediment across floodplains and creates conditions favorable to fossil formation.
    • Video: How does radiocarbon dating work
      • In this 2 minute video from Scientific American, Michael Moyer explains how scientists use radiocarbon dating to determine the age of fossils.
    • Video: How to date a planet
      • In this 3 minute video, Henry Reich explains how scientists have used radioactive dating techniques to figure out that the earth is at least 4.4 billion years old
      • For slightly more context, see this short explanation from Ask Smithsonian