The Dynamic Balance Between Earth’s Spheres 5th and 6th grade Teaching Point: Wherever you go walking or hiking, you should not only look at the small details and individual parts, but at how everything fits together. Look for clues on how the atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, and geosphere act upon one another to help shape and form the land you see. Furthermore, see the effect humans (anthroposphere) make and have made. Cross Cutting Concepts: Systems and Models, Patterns, Cause and Effect NGSS: 5-ESS2-1 Earth’s major systems are the geosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, and biosphere. These systems interact in ways that affect Earth’s surface materials and processes. 5-ESS3-1 Human activities in agriculture, industry, and everyday life have had major effects on land, vegetation, streams, oceans, air, and even outer space. But individuals and communities are doing things to help protect Earth’s resources and environments. Principles of Ecology: Nested Systems, Cycles, Dynamic Balance Time: 60 - 75 minutes includes hike up to Amphitheater Materials: Placards for key terms with visual and definition (Geosphere, Biosphere, Hydrosphere, Atmosphere) and word cards for kids to categorize the various parts of each sphere. Terms: atmosphere, geosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere and anthroposphere Architecture
Lesson Script
Set
“In the words of the famous environmentalist, John Muir: “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.” In science and much of our lives we often make sense of the world by sorting, and categorizing things into separate compartments, but actually everything is interconnected and acting with each other as a whole system of systems.
(1-2 mins)
“As we hike today, we will be looking at the relationships, patterns, and processes that shape this portion of the Galindo Creek/Pine Creek Watershed. To better understand a watershed, we must look at the main Earth systems that are “hitched” together. These include the atmosphere, geosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere and anthroposphere.” Teach This first portion of the lesson should take place at the start of the hike or in the classroom before the field trip. (15 minutes)
Hold up placards with images of Earth’s spheres and ask participants to define, describe each sphere, elaborate/clarify further as needed. Atmosphere: (Atmo- Greek for vapor) envelope of air that surrounds the solid Earth and contains gases and tiny particles of dust/ash/liquid called aerosols. The atmosphere provides space and air. The atmosphere is divided into layers of varying altitudes, temperatures and compositions and extends about 700 Km until it becomes outer space or the exosphere. The thinnest layer (about 20 Km), closest to us is known as the troposphere and is where the weather happens. The other layers affect us less because they are further out, but still interact with the Earth system by protecting it from harmful radiation (stratosphere has the ozone layer) and are visible to us at times (meteors burn up in the mesosphere) and Aurora Borealis is in the hot thermosphere. Geosphere: (Geo- Greek for earth, ground or land) all the rocks, sand, minerals on Earth’s surface and deep under the ground.
updated 7/24