Teaching Tips

• Activity will work well for learning about seasons, especially those of the Arctic, which differ greatly from seasons students in temperate or tropical regions would be familiar with.
• Activity introduces positive feedback loops and does a good job of explaining that 'positive' in this usage doesn't equate with 'good', but teachers may want to reinforce this concept.

About the Science

• Activity addresses albedo and the connection with solar radiation, snow and melting, and positive feedbacks.
• Students work with actual scientific data and are guided through the interpretation of the data.
• Comments from expert scientist:
  Scientific strengths:
  Great activity!
  - asking students to sketch their idea of albedo is a great way for them to really conceptualize
  - working with Excel data and plots
  - explains very clearly the definition of albedo and how it is measured
  - there are lots of supporting materials to guide teachers
  
  Suggestions:
  - w/m^2 should be W/m^2 (Capital 'w')
  - In my experience teaching albedo I had to often remind students that "shortwave" is the same as "solar" radiation

About the Pedagogy

• Students use the variety of data and graphs in the lesson to extrapolate connections among temperature, snowpack, and albedo in an Arctic year.
• Makes good use of Excel and provides clear explanations for students to build graphs from the given data.
• Good for teaching graphing, using provided Excel data, reading finished graphs, and for extrapolating connections among different sets of related data.

• This resource engages students in using scientific data.
  See other data-rich activities

Technical Details/Ease of Use

• With frequent changes to Excel, be sure to try the directions before assigning to students.
• Students will need computer access to Excel to create graphs and see the data provided for use in the lesson.
• There are some discrepancies in some of the data, which is explained in the teacher guide.
• Teachers who use Google Sheets instead of Excel will need to adapt the activity.

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