When you think of the NASA workforce, astronauts and rocket scientists probably come to mind. But the people who work at NASA do so much more! The new Surprisingly STEM video series highlights these unexpected NASA careers. Check out the NASA YouTube Channel for many videos that are great for classroom use.

• Marine Biologists @ NASA Kennedy. Did you know NASA’s Kennedy Space Center is a national wildlife refuge? In a Wetlands Curriculum Unit, explore five lessons about the importance of wetlands and how human activity impacts them.

• Created in collaboration with NASA, Bringing the Universe to America’s Classrooms is a PBS LearningMedia collection of Earth, Space, and Physical Science stand-alone digital media resources. The collection spans grades K-12, and is filled with video, satellite images, data visualizations and interactives, with support materials such as lesson plans, background essays, teaching tips, and student handouts. Many resources and support materials are available in Spanish, and contain other features to make the material accessible to a wide range of students.

American Museum of Natural History Resources

The American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) has engaging resources for K–12 educators, families, and students interested in learning about science. The collection includes lesson plans, curriculum, hands-on activities, articles, games and interactives, and videos for learners of all ages. In these resources, teachers can access lesson plans for all age levels. Elementary and middle level learners can explore dinosaurs and more through lessons such as What Teeth Tell Us (grades K–4), Relative Speed of Dinosaurs (grades 5–8), and Pixel This! (grades K–8), in which students decode a simple digital image from a string of numbers that represent pixels. High school students can explore the mechanics of a telescope in the lesson Focal Point. https://www.amnh.org/learn-teach/resources-for-learning

NOAA’s Weather Portal

An important tool developed by the Education Development Center’s WeatherX project is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Weather portal in CODAP, which gives K–12 educators (and anyone with a web browser) access to large-scale weather data from NOAA. The portal allows users to select and download hourly, daily, and monthly weather measurements from 1,783 weather stations in the United States, with records dating as far back as the mid-1800s. A blog post from the Concord Consortium, a partner in the WeatherX project, provides instructions for accessing the portal, as well as sample weather questions students can investigate with the data. For example, students can investigate data from their own local weather stations and make claims about whether specific weather events are extreme by comparing event data with 30-year climate averages. Teachers can also create their own questions about weather for students to explore using the data. https://concord.org/blog/explore-noaa-weather-data-in-codap/?cn-reloaded=1%C2%A0