Selected resources provide three web-based activities to complement science lessons in an issue of Beyond Weather and the Water Cycle. The free, online magazine for Grades K-5 teachers explores the essential principles of climate literacy.

The ability to ask and answer questions while reading is essential to comprehension. This article discusses instructional strategies used to teach questioning and provides many online resources. The article appears in the free, online magazine Beyond Weather and the Water Cycle, which explores the seven essential principles of the climate sciences for teachers in k-grade 5 classrooms.

This professional development article describes approaches to using social media in harnessing the power of Web 2.0 technologies to reinforce the connection between multimedia literacy and powerful content-area learning in grades K-5. The emphasis is on collaboration with the school librarian. The article appears in the free online magazine Beyond Weather and the Water Cycle, which is structured around the seven essential principles of the climate sciences.

This interactive shows the extent of the killing of lodgepole pine trees in western Canada. The spread of pine beetle throughout British Columbia has devastated the lodgepole pine forests there. This animation shows the spread of the beetle and the increasing numbers of trees affected from 1999-2008 and predicts the spread up until 2015.

This article provides a brief discussion of the importance of teaching students to analyze data and representations of data as well as two resources that can help teachers implement these strategies into their instruction.

In this nonfiction story, young readers and listeners learn how scientists use cross sections from trees to reconstruct past climates. Versions are provided for readers at two levels, k-2 and 3-5, and in text-only and illustrated formats. The story is also available as an electronic book with recorded narration. An original story is a regular feature of each issue of the free, online magazine Beyond Weather and the Water Cycle. The story can be used in science and literacy lessons and activities throughout the magazine.

This activity is a classroom and schoolyard investigation where students collect daily temperature and precipitation readings, weather observations, and weekly phenology reports in a phenology binder and in nature journals. Students then analyze this data and compare to recorded values in the Weatherguide calendar.

Students observe and discuss a simple balloon model of an electrostatic precipitator to better understand how this pollutant recovery method functions in cleaning industrial air pollution.

This article features children's literature about weather, climate, and climate change. What’s the difference between weather and climate? How do scientists observe, measure, and predict weather phenomena? How is Earth’s climate changing, and why? This month’s bookshelf will help students develop a solid grasp of weather-related concepts. It will also introduce students to global warming and climate change and inspire them to do what they can to combat the problem.

This issue of the free online magazine, Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears, highlights resources that help elementary teachers learn about climate change and teach their students important foundational concepts.

This article assembles free resources from the Climate Change and the Polar Regions issue of the Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears cyberzine into a unit outline based on the 5E learning cycle framework. Outlines are provided for Grades K-2 and Grades 3-5.

The term "global average temperature" is defined and its importance in monitoring climate change is discussed. A supplemental column makes the analogy between Earth’s temperature and human vital signs. This lesson is part of the Climate Kids website, a NASA education resource featuring articles, videos, images and games focused on the science of climate change.

NASA scientists, using several NASA Earth observing satellites, continue to seek answers to questions related to climate change. Several of those questions, focused on such topics as the effect of clouds and aerosols, and the role of the sun's cycles and the carbon cycle, are included in this article. Images of the respective satellites involved in the research are shown. This article is part of the Climate Kids website, a NASA education resource featuring articles, videos, images and games focused on the science of climate change.

This article provides five strategies for building the foundation for climate science literacy in the elementary grades.

This article discusses ten common misconceptions held by students and adults about climate change.

This article presents the candid and informal response of a climate scientist who strives to communicate the essentials of climate change.

This article from the free online magazine Beyond Weather and the Water Cycle provides appropriate science lessons for Grades K-5. The focus is on acquainting young learners with climate-change concepts that are not too complex for their grade level and will not frighten them. In each issue, the magazine develops articles around one of the seven essential principles of climate science. The author believes early lessons about water availability and extreme weather events will prepare students for complex climate concepts they will encounter in later grades.

The concepts that underlie the fourth essential principle of climate literacy ("Climate varies over space and time through both natural and man-made processes.") are too complex for students in early and upper-level elementary school, but the foundational knowledge can be taught within existing curriculums and standards. This foundational knowledge will lead to understanding in later years. The author shows the correlation to the national science education standards, identifies misconceptions among elementary school students, suggests formative assessment probes, and identifies lessons and activities to make curriculum connections. The free, online magazine Beyond Weather and the Water Cycle is based on the seven essential principles of the climate sciences.

This article provides an overview of Teaching Tolerance, a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center that provides educators with free resources around the areas of equity, justice, and tolerance.

This list of carefully selected books for grades K-5 highlights nonfiction about climate proxies, those preserved physical characteristics, such as fossils, that scientists use to reconstruct past climates. Also highlighted are a few books that provide information about two past climatic events -- the last ice age and the Dust Bowl. In each issue of the free, online magazine Beyond Weather and the Water Cycle, the virtual bookshelf recommends books that accurately portray the theme drawn from the principles of climate sciences.