⚠️ This page recently underwent an update. If you had bookmarked direct links to search results from this page prior to March 18, 2024, those links may no longer work and you may need to make a new bookmark. If you have any questions or concerns, please reach out to us at education@noaa.gov.
Welcome to our searchable database of education resources created by NOAA and our partners. If you have issues or feedback, please let us know by filling out our feedback form offsite link or sending us an email at education@noaa.gov.
Tips for using the database
Searching for terms that contain more than one word.
Use quotation marks around multiple-word phrases you want to search. For example, searching “climate change” will return resources about “climate change.” If you don’t include quotation marks, it will return resources that include either the word “climate” or “change.”
Opening resources in a new tab.
Follow the instructions below for the device you are using.
- PC: Hold down the control (ctrl) key while clicking the link. Or, right-click the link and select “open in new tab.”
- Mac: Hold down the command key while clicking the link.
- iPhone or iPad: Press and hold the link. Select “open in new tab” from the pop-up menu.
- Android device: Press and hold the link. Select “open in new tab” from the pop-up menu
Expanding categories.
Each category has a plus sign (+) to expand the available filters within the category. Some categories have subcategories. Look for the plus sign (+) to see more filterable items.
Making the most of the filterable categories.
There are several categories you can use to filter through the resources.
- “Audience” filters by grade level, including postsecondary education, and also has a filter option for adult learners.
- “Subject” filters by the general subject area, such as Arts, Earth science, Math, and more.
- “Resource Type” filters allow you to look for resources ranging from activities, lessons, and units to videos or background information.
- “Topic” filters are more specific than subject. They include filters such as climate, freshwater, and weather and atmosphere.
- “NGSS DCI” filters by Next Generation Science Standards Disciplinary Core Ideas. Only activities, lessons, and units (and no other resource types) have NGSS DCI associated with them. Not all activities, lessons, and units have this alignment.
- “Special categories” offers additional filters for specific types of resources and topics, such as printables, resources available in other languages, and safety/preparedness.
Exploring activities, lessons, and units.
Activities, lessons, and units are bundled together under resource type. You can expand to filter for only one type. Activity/demonstration refers to straightforward activities with little or no classroom strategy or pedagogy. Lesson refers to structured activities that are intended for a classroom audience. Module/unit refers to a collection of lessons that can build upon each other over multiple class periods or times of instruction; some people might call this a curriculum.
Understanding instructional strategies.
Within special categories, there is an expandable filter called “instructional strategies.” This includes special filters that are applicable for some lessons, activities, and units, including things like “outdoor education” and “uses data.”
- Activities, lessons, and units (105)
- Arts and crafts (1)
- Background information (99)
- Career profile (50)
- Citizen science project (2)
- Collection (100)
- Coloring/activity book (15)
- Contest (1)
- Data product (56)
- Job seeker resource (6)
- Multimedia (370)
- NOAA Education resource collection (7)
- Poster/brochure (12)
- Related story (65)
- Climate (278)
- Freshwater (164)
- Marine life
(483)
- Adaptations (11)
- Aquatic food webs (58)
- Coral reef ecosystems (86)
- Conservation (31)
- Ecosystems (116)
- Endangered species (20)
- Entanglement (17)
- Fish (100)
- Fisheries and seafood (112)
- Invasive marine species (9)
- Invertebrates (91)
- Life in an estuary (36)
- Marine mammals (136)
- Plankton (15)
- Salmon (23)
- Sea turtles (64)
- Seabirds (31)
- Seaweed, algae, and aquatic plants (24)
- Sharks, rays, and skates (39)
- NOAA careers (28)
- (-)
Ocean and coasts
(667)
- Earth processes (16)
- Harmful algal blooms (19)
- Maritime archaeology and history (35)
- Ocean acidification (66)
- Ocean chemistry (16)
- Ocean currents (95)
- Ocean exploration (81)
- Ocean floor features (86)
- Ocean pollution and marine debris (176)
- Ocean sounds (15)
- Oil spills (58)
- Rip currents (22)
- Sea level rise (41)
- Tides (59)
- Tsunamis (56)
- Space (50)
- Technology and engineering (293)
- Weather and atmosphere (328)
- ESS1: Earth’s Place in the Universe (2)
- ESS2: Earth’s Systems (30)
- ESS3: Earth and Human Activity (36)
- ETS1: Engineering Design (20)
- LS1: From Molecules to Organisms: Structures and Processes (10)
- LS2: Ecosystems: Interactions, Energy, and Dynamics (27)
- LS3: Heredity: Inheritance and Variation of Traits (1)
- LS4: Biological Evolution: Unity and Diversity (15)
- PS1: Matter and Its Interactions (25)
- PS2: Motion and Stability: Forces and Interactions (3)
- PS3: Energy (5)
- PS4: Waves and Their Applications in Technologies for Information Transfer (6)
- Adopt a Drifter Program (1)
- B-WET grantee (4)
- Bite-sized Science webinar series (1)
- CIRES/NOAA Science@Home webinar (1)
- CLEAN climate and energy education resource collection (1)
- Climate change in Alaska video series (1)
- Data in the Classroom (3)
- Deep Ocean Education Project Website (1)
- Deep ocean fact sheets (1)
- Deep-sea dialogues (2)
- Diving Deeper podcast (2)
- Do you NOAA? (1)
- EarthLabs (1)
- ELP grantee (2)
- Estuary Education website (1)
- Exploring our fluid Earth (1)
- Faces of the National Weather Service (1)
- Finding fish hotspots and mapping coral reefs (1)
- H.O.M.E.S. at Home webinars (1)
- JetStream: An online school for weather (1)
- Making Waves podcast (4)
- Marine Careers: A Sea Grant guide to ocean opportunities (1)
- Marine Debris at-home collection (1)
- Marine Debris Program posters (1)
- Marine Debris STEAMSS (4)
- Marine Debris Toolkit (1)
- Maritime Archaeology (1)
- MOSAiC: Multidisciplinary Drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate videos (1)
- MOSAiC: Multidisciplinary Drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate virtual reality tours (1)
- National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) (1)
- National Marine Ecosystem Status (1)
- National Marine Sanctuaries Webinar Series: Archived webinars (3)
- NOAA and the Octonauts podcast (1)
- NOAA Boulder Labs: Meet our team (1)
- NOAA Boulder Virtual 8th Grade Science Days (1)
- NOAA Commissioned Officer Corps (1)
- NOAA Digital Coast (2)
- NOAA Fisheries YouTube (1)
- NOAA Live! 4 Kids (1)
- NOAA Live! Alaska (1)
- NOAA Marine Debris Program (5)
- NOAA Ocean Podcast (1)
- NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer: Education materials collection (1)
- Ocean Acidification Communication Toolkit: Dungeness crab case study (1)
- Ocean Exploration careers (2)
- Ocean Exploration educational materials (8)
- Ocean Exploration facts (2)
- Ocean facts (3)
- Ocean Today (237)
- Octonauts Corner (1)
- Oregon Marine Scientist and Educator Alliance (ORSEA) (1)
- Pacific Tsunami Warning Center animations and short videos (1)
- Sanctuaries 360 virtual dives (1)
- Sanctuaries LIVE Interactions (1)
- Sanctuaries media gallery (1)
- Sanctuaries resource collection: Coral reef ecosystems (1)
- Sanctuaries resource collection: Ocean sound and impact of noise (3)
- Science On a Sphere catalog (6)
- SciJinks (3)
- Sea Grant podcasts (5)
- Sea-Earth-Atmosphere (SEA) resources (1)
- Signals of Spring ACES (Animals in Curriculum-based Ecosystem Studies) (1)
- Teacher at Sea (2)
- Underwater robot education theme (1)
- Women in science profiles (1)
Audience
Subject
Resource type
Topic
Materials like consumer plastics, metals, rubber, paper, textiles, lost fishing gear, vessels, and other lost or discarded items can easily end up in the ocean, where it becomes marine debris. Marine debris threatens the ocean and its resources, the economy, and safe navigation. Animals like turtles, marine mammals, birds, and other creatures can die when they accidentally swallow or get tangled up in marine debris. These materials can also crush sensitive habitats like seagrass beds or coral reefs. All national marine sanctuaries face the challenges of marine debris and the harmful impacts that come along with managing this problem. This collection features resources related to the problem of marine debris, NOAA and sanctuary system programs, and the solution to pollution.
Audience
Subject
Resource type
Topic
Learn all about the incredible staff who work for NOAA Research! This page provides dozens of career profiles from many fields within NOAA.
Audience
Subject
Resource type
Topic
Special categories
The NOAA Voices Program has been collecting and sharing oral history interviews related to the changing environment, climate, oceans and coasts since 2003. Search the collection, listen, and learn from a diversity of experiences. Create your own collection to archive and share.
Audience
Subject
Resource type
Topic
NGSS DCI
Special categories
Collection name
This collection of six separate lessons includes tutorial videos for each themed lesson, except ecological field modeling.
- Density dynamics: Experiment by creating four model bodies of water and observe how they compare.
- Ecological field monitoring: Get into the field and investigate the ecosystems in your local community using field equipment.
- Glaciers: Investigate how topography came to be through glacial activity 33,000 years ago. Use geologic and physical tests to uncover the evidence left behind by the Laurentide Ice Sheet. Track and hunt down the path laid by ice giants of the past.
- Marine debris & microplastics: Discover how marine debris impacts the environment as you experiment with buoyancy and design a model ocean with circular currents.
- Watersheds: Explore how we impact our water systems and the watersheds that sustain our population. Create a model coastal community and observe how pollutants travel within a watershed
- Weather & climate: Explore the differences between weather and climate, look at real-time NOAA weather and climate data, experiment with sea level rise, and create coastal resiliency models.
Audience
Subject
Resource type
Topic
This resource collection from NOAA Education explores how tsunamis form and move and what NOAA does to forecast their movement. Tsunamis are just long waves — really long waves. But what is a wave? Sound waves, radio waves, even “the wave” in a stadium all have something in common with the waves that move across oceans. It takes an external force to start a wave, like dropping a rock into a pond or waves blowing across the sea. In the case of tsunamis, the forces involved are large — and their effects can be correspondingly massive.
Audience
Subject
Resource type
Topic
This resource collection from NOAA Education shares an introduction to tides. Knowledge of the times, heights, and the flow of tides is of importance in a wide range of situations such as navigation through coastal waterways; construction of bridges, docks, breakwaters, and deep-water channels; and for fishing, boating, surfing, and water sports.
Audience
Subject
Resource type
Topic
This resource collection from NOAA Education explores what oil is, where it comes from, how oil spills can happen, and what NOAA does in response to these events. Oil is an ancient fossil fuel that we use to heat our homes, generate electricity, and power large sectors of our economy. But when oil accidentally spills into the ocean, it can cause big problems. Oil spills can harm sea creatures, ruin a day at the beach, and make seafood unsafe to eat. It takes sound science to clean up the oil, measure the impacts of pollution, and help the ocean recover.
Audience
Subject
Resource type
Topic
This resource collection from NOAA Education explores where pollution comes from, how it impacts humans and other living things, and what NOAA does to help combat this issue. Each year, billions of pounds of trash and other pollutants enter the ocean. Where does this pollution come from? Where does it go? Some of the debris ends up on our beaches, washed in with the waves and tides. Some debris sinks, some is eaten by marine animals that mistake it for food, and some accumulates in ocean gyres. Other forms of pollution that impact the health of the ocean come from sources like oil spills or from accumulation of many dispersed sources, such as fertilizer from our yards.
Audience
Subject
Resource type
Topic
This resource collection from NOAA Education takes you on a trip to the bottom of the ocean, exploring feature and ecosystems and how we study them. Want to climb the tallest mountain on Earth from its base to its peak? First you will need to get into a deep ocean submersible and dive almost 4 miles under the surface of the Pacific Ocean to the sea floor.
Audience
Subject
Resource type
Topic
This resource collection from NOAA Education explores how the ocean moves across our planet and what impacts ocean currents have. Ocean water is on the move, affecting your climate, your local ecosystem, and the seafood that you eat. Ocean currents, abiotic features of the environment, are continuous and directed movements of ocean water. These currents are on the ocean’s surface and in its depths, flowing both locally and globally.