Classroom Resources

This activity allows students to use authentic scientific data to make claims about the threat of coral bleaching for reefs around the world.

This activity reinforces concepts presented in the short film The Making of a Theory. Using a map of the Malay Archipelago and information about the animals found on different islands, students discover the Wallace Line: a sharp boundary that separates distinct Asian and Australian fauna.

This activity guides students through building a conceptual model of how carbon dioxide affects Earth’s climate.

This activity supports concepts covered in the short film The Day the Mesozoic Died. Students analyze graphs and data on pollen grains and fern spores to form a picture of the living landscape before and after the mass extinction that marked the end of the age of the dinosaurs.

This activity allows students to calculate the mass, size, and kinetic energy of an asteroid that struck Earth 66 million years ago, based on the total abundance of iridium in a sediment layer. It supports concepts presented in the short film The Day the Mesozoic Died.

This activity allows students to analyze the chemical data that led researchers to conclude that a layer of clay at the boundary between the Cretaceous and Paleogene rock layers (the K-Pg boundary) contained an extraordinary concentration of iridium. It supports concepts presented in the short film The Day the Mesozoic Died.

This activity allows students to calculate how much iridium was released, and eventually deposited all over the Earth, by the impact of an asteroid that struck Earth 66 million years ago. It supports concepts presented in the short film The Day the Mesozoic Died.

In this activity, students read a passage about how planets in our solar system formed and why the element iridium is so rare in Earth’s crust. They then answer questions about the information presented, testing their non-fiction reading comprehension.