Watching Over the Earth
This resource, from ESA, is intended to familiarise students between the ages of 11 and 14 with the subject of satellite imagery. Satellite images are of increasing importance in a great many domains and are dramatically changing the way the world and physical phenomena are perceived. Their use and understanding by students is one of the aims of this project.
The topics and examples in this pack were chosen to match the content of school curricula in Europe, especially in geography, life and Earth sciences and physics.
The 11 topics combine satellite images, short texts, photographs and illustrations in an effort to provide information of different origins and on different scales.
Each worksheet comes with a sheet entitled Information for teachers that further develops the topic in question, providing additional information on each of the satellite images in the worksheet.
The 11 topics are:
1. Earth observation satellites
Presents the concept of Earth Observation; helps students to understand distances in space and discuss the variety of uses and data provided by satellites.
2. The Earth viewed from space
Locate and identify the planet’s continental masses and ocean basins; discuss the effects of the Earth’s rotation and revolution; apply concepts such as longitude, latitude, radiation etc.
3. Humans on Earth
Focuses mainly on population and population density
4. Africa and environmental diversity
Locates and identifies the major “natural” environments of the African continent and can be used to understand the factors that affect the location of these major environments.
5. Asia and rice growing
Observe and identify the shapes and landscapes inherent to rice-growing.
6. Europe: a developed continent
Locate and identify the continent’s major urban centres and economic hubs; analyse urban landscapes; apply concepts such as city, landscape, pollution, etc.
7. Living species and their environments
Discover and construct the concepts of ecosystem and food chain; track the evolution of food supply for marine species such as whales; track the path of migratory birds such as Brent geese.
8. Water on Earth
Describe the different water reserves on the planet, where they are located and how it is transferred and used.
9. Volcanoes: Mount Etna, a case study
Locate and identify the main volcanic phenomena and analyses of the relationships between human societies and volcanism.
10. Flood monitoring
Locate and identify certain at-risk regions in Western Europe; distinguish the different natural risks for human societies; evaluate the role humans play in the consequences of natural disasters.
11. Colours in satellite imagery
An introduction to the concept of wavelength, and the electromagnetic spectrum and a discussion of the characteristics of satellite images and the different processing methods used.
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Review
Each of these booklets uses Earth observation satellites and their use to examine different aspects of Earth. The…
Each of these booklets uses Earth observation satellites and their use to examine different aspects of Earth. The booklets contain excellent images and give students a different view of Earth, at the end of each booklet is a set of questions for students to reflect on what they have read.
The topics are very broad and cover several cirriculum areas, those relating to Science are the colours in satellites and living species in their environments. The Volcano topic does link to the Rock cycle in KS3 however it is not very Scientific in context, it can be used as a good literacy task for able key stage 3 students.
There are several ways to use these resources, if used together they could form part of a cross cirricular day hoghlighting the links between the Sciences and Geography in understanding and montoring Earth.
The colours in Satellite booklet works as a good end of topic activity, I think the main forcus for the more able is to look at the colours of vegetation, drawing their own diagrams to explain what they have read extends the activity.
The living species and environment booklet is really well written and the format and images are very attractive to students, this booklet looks at migratory paths which again is a good extension of the key stage 3 topic, I would recomend using this as an extended learning task whilst looking at adaptations in animals.
These booklets are aimed at key stage 3 however they could easily be exteded for use in key stage 4, the images and information in them are a good resource for students interested in Earth and Space. I would recomend their use only for students with good literacy skills at key stage 3.
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Resource author
Resource by: ESA
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