Visualizing the Poles

Middle school students are transitioning from concrete to abstract thinkers. The concept of Earth's poles is an abstraction. Bridging from the concrete, familiar to the abstract, unfamiliar is necessary. These resources facilitate student understanding of the relative position of Earth’s poles.

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Activity 1 : make an Earth http://www.polaris.iastate.edu/NorthStar/Unit1/activity1.htm

In this activity, students construct their own model of Earth. Why bother when students can be presented with a commercially prepared model? By plotting the latitudes and longitudes themselves, students stand a better chance of retaining what they learn regarding how we visualize Earth. In addition, through completion of the model building activity, students gain experience in moving from 2-D to 3-D images and back again — helpful in developing abstract-thinking skills. Consider adapting the activity and have students draw the Antarctic land mass, while noting the lack of land mass at the North Pole. Mapping the Arctic Circle instead might be useful. Their model can be a reference throughout their study of polar science. MSP full record

National Geophysical Data Center : relief globe slides http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/image/relief_slides2.html

This resource from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration allows you to choose a view of the earth and then see the relative elevations captured in the view. Use in conjunction with the earth-modeling activity to enhance student visualization of the poles. MSP full record

Atlas of the cyrosphere http://nsidc.org/data/atlas/index.html

View dynamic maps of snow, sea ice, glaciers, ice sheets, permafrost, and more. First, choose which hemisphere you want to view. After that, choose the zoom level from the left navigation bar. Choose the features you want in your view from the right. For example, when viewing the Northern Hemisphere, you might zoom to the level of the Arctic Circle and choose to have cities labeled and the prime meridian and glaciers indicated. This tool can be explored by students independently, or you may use it for whole-class presentations to assist students in visualizing the poles and how they differ geographically. MSP full record

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Copyright March 2008 — The Ohio State University. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0424671. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.