Earth System Cards
(go to the Flash online game)

Grade Level K-4

Essential Question How are things divided among Earth's four spheres?

Objective Students will use their knowledge of Earth's four major spheres — land, water, living things, and air — to classify information. They will also make connections among the spheres.

Approach Present the students with the following: Everything on Earth belongs to one of four spheres. Earth's spheres are land, water, living things, and air.

Online, students are presented with a stack of cards. Each card is labeled with a word or picture that represents something from one of Earth's spheres. Instruct the students to sort the cards into four piles. One pile is land. One pile is water. One pile is living things. And one pile is air. Students should click on the top card in the stack and drag it to the sphere pile it belongs to. If they are correct, the card will stay there. If they are incorrect, the card will move to the discard pile.

Reflection To display their knowledge of the connections among Earth's four spheres, each student should create a Story Box using the following procedure. Fold a large sheet of paper into four boxes. Open the paper and draw a small circle in the center. Write the word "Earth" inside the circle and label the boxes as "Living Things," "Land," "Air," and "Water." In the box labeled "living things," draw a living thing. In the box labeled "land," draw the type of land that would benefit that living thing. In the box labeled "air," draw the type of air that would benefit that living thing. In the box labeled "water," draw the type of water that would benefit that living thing.

Students can either tell the story of their living thing or write a short summary of their ideas on the back of the paper.