Positives

• Students will explore human interactions with Earth systems and hone their systems thinking skills.
• This interdisciplinary lesson incorporates Earth science, geography, and math components.

Additional Prerequisites

• Each student group will need a computer with internet access.
• If students make graphs by hand, each group will need poster paper, markers, and post-it notes.
• Students should understand the basics of reading maps, graphing, climate change, and the water cycle.

Differentiation

• Teachers can choose the scale of this lesson by assigning students specific areas globally, nationally, or locally.
• The lesson is designed for New York City classrooms, but teachers can easily modify it for use in other cities by changing locations for research.
• Students can create the graphs by hand on poster paper or digitally in Google Sheets.
• The lesson includes an optional extension activity where students learn about the watersheds in upstate New York through a penpal program.
• The lesson does not provide much instruction for students to create their graphs. Teachers should consider walking students through an example location as a class to help students understand how to interpret the NOAA maps, set up data tables, and create effective graphs.