IISG’s Weather and Climate Toolkit
Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant (IISG) has created a weather and climate education toolkit where teachers—whether parents, home school tutors or licensed professionals—can find resources on the topics of weather, climate and climate change. The toolkit provides a sortable list of external resources and can be filtered by grade level, specific weather and climate subtopics or geographic locations, learning mode and more. Filtering by scale can identify educational resources unique to the Great Lakes. Many of the lesson plans and activities in this curated catalog of resources can be used as-is or adapted for virtual learning and at-home teaching environments.
External Curriculum Materials
Ice Cover on the Great Lakes
NOAA’s Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory describes long-term fluctuations in ice coverage in the Great Lakes.
What factors impact ice coverage on the Great Lakes?
What impacts do you think ice on the Great Lakes might have on the surrounding area? Ice actually has a considerable impact. Shipping is shut down for a part of the year. Fish spawning can be impacted. Shoreline structures can be damaged. Even the climate itself is impacted by the ice overage. After students have recorded their own perceptions of ice coverage of the great lake and then compared them to actual data, they will be asked to develop an investigation that will test factors that they believe influence ice coverage on the Great Lakes.
