Find Resources

Students learn about topographic maps, including contour maps, by collecting data from a 3D model of a landform to create a contour map. Then the teacher provides direct instruction on contour map features, creating profiles, and calculating gradient, and students create profiles and calculate gradients for the contour map they created during the explore phase. Finally, students match typical geographical features to representations on a contour map and extend their thinking by identifying erosional processes on a contour map.

The Regents Item Bank provides questions from past Regents exams aligned with the content of this unit.

In this 5E instructional sequence students learn about evaporation and condensation of water in the atmosphere by observing these processes, then read a text and watch a short video that help them connect what they observed and cloud formation. Students then investigate the conditions that need to exist in order for cloud formation and precipitation to occur through a dew point/relative humidity lab and subsequent analysis.

Students test out their ideas and misconceptions about temperature in the atmosphere by applying their thinking to a new task that asks them to consider the relationship between temperature and air moisture in the atmosphere.

Students learn how pressure and temperature change at different altitudes of the atmosphere by analyzing secondary data and connecting it to particle diagrams of air at different altitudes. Students then refine their understanding of pressure and temperature at different altitudes by watching videos that explain these concepts. 

Students test out their ideas and misconceptions about topographic by applying their thinking to a new problem: Contour Map/Geographical Feature Card Sort.