presents a travel itinerary of 58 historic places across Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico. It includes forts built to protect mail routes and settlers, missions and churches, prehistoric cliff dwellings, trading posts, petroglyphs (from the petrified forest), pit house villages, and Indian villages home to the Anasazi, Sinagua, Zuni, and other Native American tribes.

Climagraphs can tell us about the seasonal shifts in climate due to climate change. Changes in growing season and water balance in the Great Lakes region will have economic impacts.

In this lesson, students find their location on a map using Latitude and Longitudinal coordinates. They determine where they should go to be rescued and how best to get there.

Students will examine how human actions and population changes can affect the environment. Students will examine a series of photographs that compare famous landmarks (Times Square, the Saltair Pavilion in Utah, Laguna Beach, and Niagara Falls) across time, and then they will identify human-generated changes in the physical environment, such as the addition of bridges and roads. Students will also examine U.S. Census Bureau population and housing data to see how population changes can contribute to changes in the physical environment. In addition, students will describe the impact of these changes on the environment.

G1.3.1 - Use geographic themes (regions, human-environment interaction).
G3.1.1 - Interpret and compare climate graphs.
G3.2.2 - Identify major ecosystems and explain why some provide greater opportunities
for humans and how land use changes with technology.
G4.3.2 - Explain why people settle where they do and how they make their living.
G5.2.1 - Describe effects that a change in the physical environment could have on
human activities and choices people make in adjusting to the change.
G5.2.2 - Describe how combinations of human decisions and natural forces can lead to
(or help people avoid) a natural disaster.

This collection of free, authoritative source information about the history, politics, geography, and culture of many states and territories has been funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Our Teacher's Guide provides compelling questions, links to humanities organizations and local projects, and research activity ideas for integrating local history into humanities courses.

Changes in climate can have direct and indirect on human health. In these activities, students will review the negative impacts of climate change on human health, interpret data that provides evidence of these impacts, and discuss how state and local agencies are acting to try to decrease these impacts.Links are provided to folders on Google Drive with resources for each disease category.

Students are introduced to our planet's structure and its dynamic system of natural forces through an examination of the natural hazards of earthquakes, volcanoes, landslides, tsunamis, floods and tornados, as well as avalanches, fires, hurricanes and thunderstorms. They see how these natural events become disasters when they impact people, and how engineers help to make people safe from them. Students begin by learning about the structure of the Earth; they create clay models showing the Earth's layers, see a continental drift demo, calculate drift over time, and make fault models. They learn how earthquakes happen; they investigate the integrity of structural designs using model seismographs. Using toothpicks and mini-marshmallows, they create and test structures in a simulated earthquake on a tray of Jell-O. Students learn about the causes, composition and types of volcanoes, and watch and measure a class mock eruption demo, observing the phases that change a mountain's shape. Students learn that the different types of landslides are all are the result of gravity, friction and the materials involved. Using a small-scale model of a debris chute, they explore how landslides start in response to variables in material, slope and water content. Students learn about tsunamis, discovering what causes them and makes them so dangerous. Using a table-top-sized tsunami generator, they test how model structures of different material types fare in devastating waves. Students learn about the causes of floods, their benefits and potential for disaster. Using riverbed models made of clay in baking pans, students simulate the impact of different river volumes, floodplain terrain and levee designs in experimental trials. They learn about the basic characteristics, damage and occurrence of tornadoes, examining them closely by creating water vortices in soda bottles. They complete mock engineering analyses of tornado damage, analyze and graph US tornado damage data, and draw and present structure designs intended to withstand high winds.

This lesson will allow students to explore an important role of environmental engineers: cleaning the environment. Students will learn details about the Exxon Valdez oil spill, which was one of the most publicized and studied environmental tragedies in history. In the accompanying activity, they will try many "engineered" strategies to clean up their own manufactured oil spill and learn the difficulties of dealing with oil released into our waters.

Sixth grade students from Rochester, NY transformed their own community by leading a successful campaign to revitalize the downtown of Rochester through re-watering closed sections of the Erie Canal. Students did original research in other cities, interviewing city leaders, engineers and business leaders who had successfully renewed their downtowns around a waterway. They created a report that helped convince the city to invest in this urban renewal project. This film features news footage of the students and an interview with the mayor.

Students learn about various natural hazards and specific methods engineers use to prevent these hazards from becoming natural disasters. They study a hypothetical map of an area covered with natural hazards and decide where to place natural disaster prevention devices by applying their critical thinking skills and an understanding of the causes of natural disasters.

In this lesson, students will explore the causes of water pollution and its effects on the environment through the use of models and scientific investigation. In the accompanying activities, they will investigate filtration and aeration processes as they are used for removing pollutants from water. Lastly, they will learn about the role of engineers in water treatment systems.