Drought Unit Labs
Lesson Plans
Grades9, 10, 11, 12Biology, Earth and Space Sciences, Geography
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Provided by TERC
What it is
- This group of eight interactive labs teaches students about the causes of droughts, how we can reduce the impacts of droughts, and learn about technologies that can reduce water stress.
- Students will learn about where water resources exist, what a watershed is, historic droughts, and drought mitigation.
Teaching tips
Positives
- The lab overviews section identifies all of the materials you'll need to gather and provides a quick scope and sequence of the unit. Key questions and learning objectives are also outlined.
- Students may be surprised learning about the Dust Bowl, imagining sand dunes covering huge parts of the plains.
Additional Prerequisites:
- Review teacher resources for general background information relevant to each lab.
- Connect the human actions that make droughts worse with solutions that can be accomplished through human actions as well.
Differentiation
- Advanced students can do some of the lab sections independently or in groups.
- Students that live in the Western U.S. can look for local information about droughts that connects these labs to their city or state.
- As an extension, have students research solutions to water scarcity such as solar-powered desalination that incorporate climate solutions and water solutions.
From the scientist review
This resource is phenomenal to provide understanding to students to interpret climate data and predict drought events. In this resource, please note that photo from NOAA has no location and year it was shot. This resource is recommended
How we review resourcesReady to use it?
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