Grade 9 Lesson plan
Ravenscarr's Wells and Ellinmere Brook: Where Baseflow Goes
A 55-minute grade 9 lesson where students convert well pumping rates to stream units and trace how pumping a shallow aquifer lowers a brook's late-summer flow.
NGSS · High School (9–12)
HS-ESS2-2 Analyze how one Earth-surface change feeds back on other systems
Analyze geoscience data to make the claim that one change to Earth's surface can create feedbacks that cause changes to other Earth systems.
Clarification statement: Examples should include climate feedbacks, such as how an increase in greenhouse gases causes a rise in global temperatures that melts glacial ice, which reduces the amount of sunlight reflected from Earth's surface, increasing surface temperatures and further reducing the amount of ice. Examples could also be taken from other system interactions, such as how the loss of ground vegetation causes an increase in water runoff and soil erosion; how dammed rivers increase groundwater recharge, decrease sediment transport, and increase coastal erosion; or how the loss of wetlands causes a decrease in local humidity that further reduces the wetland extent.
Why water teaches this standard well
Several of the clarification's feedback examples are water systems: dammed rivers altering groundwater and coastal erosion, vegetation loss increasing runoff, wetland loss drying the local air. Analyzing these lets students trace how one water-management decision cascades through connected Earth systems.
Materials tagged with this code are written to the full standard , including its clarification statement , and each carries a written note explaining the alignment. See how we review materials.
16 materials aligned to HS-ESS2-2
Lesson plans
Grade 10 Lesson plan
Bell Hollow Lake: Nutrients as Resource and Pollutant
A 45-minute grade 10 lesson tracing how excess nutrients drive an algal bloom and oxygen crash, then having students design a nutrient-reduction solution.
Grade 10 Lesson plan
Ravenglass Basin Snowpack Decline: A Warming Water Cycle
A 50-minute grade 10 Earth systems lesson where students read model streamflow output to trace how a warming climate shifts a snow-fed basin's water supply.
Grade 11 Lesson plan
Ketteridge Basin's Snowpack: Albedo Feedback and Runoff Timing
A grade 11 lesson tracing the snow-albedo feedback, then using rates of change and a runoff table to show how earlier melt shifts a city's summer water supply.
Grade 9 Lesson plan
Bramble Cove's Salty Wells: Modeling Saltwater Intrusion
A 50-minute grade 9 lesson using the 40-to-1 freshwater head rule and a mixing calculation to explain why summer pumping turns a fictional coastal town's wells salty.
Grade 10 Lesson plan
Hollow Pine River: Streamflow Data and Earth-System Feedbacks
A grade 10 lesson where students analyze streamflow and sediment data around a fictional dammed river to identify Earth-system feedbacks and write a claim.
Grade 9 Lesson plan
Windrow Creek's Watershed: Modeling Runoff After Development
A grade 9 Earth science lesson where students use the rational method to compare peak stormwater runoff before and after development in a fictional watershed.
Worksheets
Grade 10 Worksheet
Stonehaven Wellfield and Ledger Creek: Testing Two Explanations
A grade 10 science worksheet where students weigh monitoring-well and stream gauge records to decide whether a fictional town's wellfield or a drought drained a creek.
Grade 9 Worksheet
Copperfield Commons: Stormwater Runoff and the Rational Method
A grade 9 worksheet using the rational method to show how paving a fictional site raises peak stormwater runoff into a creek, and how green infrastructure lowers it.
Classroom activities
Grade 11 Classroom activity
Ondry River Stream Table: Bank Erosion at an Intake
A grade 11 stream-table investigation where teams vary discharge, slope, and bank cover, then explain a migrating bend beside a fictional water intake.
Reading passages
Grade 10 Reading passage
Why the Yarncombe Valley Sinks in Every Dry Year
A grade 10 science reading passage on land subsidence in a farming valley, with benchmark survey data and questions on clay compaction and the pumping feedback loop.
Writing prompts
Grade 11 Writing prompt
Fallowmere Reservoir's Late-Summer Oxygen Loss
Grade 11 students read four months of depth profiles from a fictional reservoir and explain stratification, deep-water anoxia, and the phosphorus release that follows.
Grade 12 Writing prompt
Rennick Creek: Channel Change and Late-Summer Flow
A grade 12 scientific argument prompt in which students weigh channel incision against irrigation withdrawal as the cause of a fictional creek's summer flow loss.
Grade 9 Writing prompt
How Draining Cawthorne Marsh Changed Drumlane's Water
A grade 9 science explanatory prompt where students use a fictional monitoring table to explain how draining a marsh changed floods, summer flow, and temperature.
Quizzes & test questions
Grade 10 Quiz & test questions
Ashcombe River Basin: A Water Cycle and Earth Systems Quiz
A grade 10 science quiz mixing multiple-choice, short-answer, and computation items on residence time, water distribution, and Earth-system feedbacks.
Grade 9 Quiz & test questions
Water Cycle and Watersheds: A Grade 9 Earth Systems Test
A 25-point grade 9 assessment on the water cycle and watersheds, mixing multiple-choice, short-answer, and one runoff computation item on Earth's connected systems.