Teachers: Bring NOAA back to school with you

Here are a few of our favorite education resources for teachers, and you can find even more in our resource collections.

Teach about climate and climate change

Climate and climate change are critical topics, and your students may have a lot of questions about what they hear in the news and on social media. But it can be tricky to teach such a complicated field with so many broad impacts. We have plenty of resources to help you get your students informed and engaged. 

• Dive into our recently updated climate change impacts resource collection, chock full of lessons, data resources, and much more.
• Open up the Toolbox for Teaching Climate & Energy to find great ways to structure thinking and teaching about this complicated topic.
• Bring NOAA data to your students with NOAA Data in the Classroom online modules. These modules guide students through how to use data to better understand climate-related issues like ocean acidification, sea level rise, and coral bleaching.
• Visualize past climate data and future projections with the Climate Explorer offsite link. Future models offer different scenarios based on different human activity.
• Watch the Ocean Today: Research video collection, including several recent Climate Alive! videos about current and recent climate events. Stay tuned for more! 

Be citizen scientists using only a smartphone or computer

With citizen science projects, you and your students can get directly involved with the scientific process by collecting and interpreting data that will be used to help better understand our Earth and Earth systems. The projects listed below use only a smartphone or computer, with no extra equipment needed! Explore more citizen science projects at citizenscience.gov.

• Help out Hawaiʻi fisheries with OceanEyes offsite link. Count and measure deep-water snappers and grouper to help fishery managers better understand fish populations.
• Participate in a variety of different citizen science projects with the international Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) Program. Teachers can participate in virtual or in-person trainings and become more involved in the program. 
• Use your smartphone to help monitor trash in your local waterways with the Marine Debris Monitoring Toolkit for Educators. Even though “marine” is in the name, this project is for all waterways, even if you’re far from the coast!
• Have any budding historians in your classes? In the Old Weather offsite link project, citizen scientists explore, mark, and transcribe historic ship logs from the 19th and early 20th centuries, helping to reveal data about past weather and sea ice to help us better understand our climate.
• Help the National Weather Service fine-tune their forecasts by submitting your precipitation data to mPING (Meteorological Phenomena Identification Near the Ground). Weather radars can’t “see” what happens on the ground, so mPING helps to fill in the gaps.

Discover brand new watershed education resources 

The Bay Watershed Education and Training (B-WET) program funds watershed education projects around the country, and their grantees produce amazing education resources featuring their local communities. Check out these new products!

• Investigate the movement of water through the water cycle using a watershed model with the Raindrop to Sea Video Series from the Cascade Head Biosphere Reserve offsite link.
• Examine water quality data from several sites along the Nisqually River with the Water Quality Monitoring offsite link online module from the Nisqually River Education Project offsite link. Then use the data to determine if it is a healthy ecosystem for salmon. 
• Explore the history and ecosystem of the Loko ea fishpond in Oʻahu with the Restoring Ea offsite link learning unit from BSCS Science Learning offsite link. 
• Learn more about watersheds, soil, pollution, and rainscaping with the elementary-aged Earth Genius Curriculum offsite link from One Cool Earth offsite link. 
• Bring a field trip about the salmon life cycle into your classroom with a video series and field journal with the Virtual Salmon Heroes offsite link project from the Environmental Science Center offsite link. All materials are available in English and Spanish.
• Go on virtual field trips to Galveston Bay with the At Home with the Bay offsite link series from the Galveston Bay Foundation offsite link. Each of the five field trips focuses on one topic and includes a lab, craft, video talk with a biologist, and an activity to do at home.

Connect with NOAA experts 

Being able to learn directly from experts is an exciting way to learn more about Earth science! NOAA has many opportunities to connect with experts across the agency.

• Find local NOAA offices with our NOAA in your backyard website. You can find names and email addresses for NOAA staff across the country.
• Bring a meteorologist into your classroom (virtually) with the National Weather Service virtual outreach program. You can sign up to have a video call with a meteorologist to help answer all your weather questions. 
• Watch new webinars live or watch past webinars on demand with our webinars calendar and archive page. There are webinars on everything from the surface of the sun to the bottom of the ocean floor.
• Browse the archives of the 100 NOAA Live! 4 Kids webinars offsite link that came out in 2020 and 2021. These interactive webinars, made just for kids, helped connect students with NOAA scientists and researchers. Keep your eyes peeled for what is planned for this fall!