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Air Pollution Lesson Plan

Earth and Space Science - A Study of Atmosphere, Climate, and Air Chemistry (PM2.5/Air Pollution)

Rebekka Joslin, Richard Malatesta, James Harris, Alexander Jacques, Erik Crosman, John Horel, Lindsey Nesbitt

Email gg-info@lists.utah.edu to receive the full lesson plan and worksheets. 

Many educators and researchers in the Salt Lake Valley are passionate in teaching our communities about the air quality issues we face. There are existing resources for teachers to use in their classrooms that explore and describe the fundamentals of air chemistry and pollution, the role geography plays in forming inversions, the types and relative sizes of particulate matter pollution, and hands-on ways of collecting visual particulate matter pollution samples. The purpose of this curriculum is to list these resources and complement them by providing learning activities focused on skills related to analyzing inversion event data. 

As technological capabilities continue to grow at astounding rates, so do the number and size of data sets. Consequently, there is growing need for scientists to organize, analyze and help society learn from this information. The need exists for preparing students for the field of data science and training all students how to use data to ask and answer scientific questions. In high school, especially, teachers should be helping students practice the skills of making predictions, analyzing graphs and using data to support ideas, and apply their learning to real world issues. 

This teaching module contains detailed background information, teacher preparation materials, lesson plans, and directions for an engaging lecture on air quality.  The module can be used to create an interactive learning experience for your students to increase their air pollution knowledge base and interest level in their local environment.  

Standards Alignment

This curriculum can be used to meet new Utah Science with Engineering Education (SEED) Standards implemented for the 2020/2021 academic year. Each of the included lessons are designed to give students practice making informed predictions, analyzing real-world data, and critically evaluating scientific hypotheses. It includes exercises that align with: 

Strand ESS.3: System Interactions: Atmosphere, Hydrosphere, and Geosphere - Standard ESS.3.4 

Analyze and interpret patterns in data about the factors influencing weather of a given location. Emphasize the amount of solar energy received due to latitude, elevation, the proximity to mountains and/ or large bodies of water, air mass formation and movement, and air pressure gradients. (ESS2.D) 

Strand ESS.4: Stability and Change in Natural Resources - Standard ESS.4.4 

Evaluate design solutions for a major global or local environmental problem based on one of Earth’s systems. Define the problem, identify criteria and constraints, analyze available data on proposed solutions, and determine an optimal solution. Examples of major global or local problems could include water pollution or availability, air pollution, deforestation, or energy production. (ESS3.C, ETS1.A, ETS1.B, ETS1.C)  

This material can be used as class experiments for:

Standard ESS.4.1 

Construct an explanation for how the availability of natural resources, the occurrence of natural hazards, and changes in climate affect human activity. Examples of natural resources could include access to fresh water, clean air, or regions of fertile soils. Examples of factors that affect human activity could include that rising sea levels cause humans to move farther from the coast or that humans build railroads to transport mineral resources from one location to another. (ESS3.A, ESS3.B) 

Curricular Goal

The goal of this curriculum is to develop in students data science skills using existing data related to air quality in the Salt Lake Valley, and can be extended to include other areas. The MesoWest website provides real time as well as historical air quality data from a variety of sensors across the state of Utah. These data sets can be used by teachers to achieve the goal(s) of asking and answering scientific questions using data. 

Target Grade Level

These lessons are designed for use in high school Earth Science courses. However, parts of the lessons could be easily adapted for use with middle school age students. The lesson plans are designed in a modular format, so that they may be used independently to supplement existing curriculum in the classroom or integrated together as an entire unit. 

Curriculum (summed up)

  1. Lesson 1 - Components of the Atmosphere
  2. Lesson 2 - Climate
  3. Lessson 3 - Anthropogenic Inputs to the Atmosphere
  4. Lesson 4 - Graphing Time-Series Data
  5. Lesson 5 - Inversion Events
  6. Lesson 5 - PM 2.5

How to use the lessons

  1. Teacher Prep

    1. Depending on a teacher’s existing knowledge of air quality issues, individual teachers will need to familiarize themselves with a) the basics of air quality dynamics in the Salt Lake Valley and b) the process for using and retrieving data from the MesoWest website before working with students on the lessons. The resources in “Additional Resources” provide relevant background information, slides to use, and MesoWest navigation information.  

  2. Academic Information for Lesson Plans

    1. To provide flexibility for using the lessons and incorporating them into pre-existing curricula, this curriculum includes a variety of “Academic Information”. The purpose of the Academic Information is to provide links to already established material prepared by other authors that provide background information and skills to students new to Atmospheric Science and data analysis. Depending on student knowledge and individual teacher needs, these activities can be incorporated, modified, or ignored.  We advise saving this information as pdf files because websites change or sometimes are deleted.  Please site the information you choose to use.

  3. Activities - Each of the included lessons are designed to give students practice making informed predictions, analyzing real-world data, and critically evaluating scientific hypotheses. We present each of activity with three “Options”, depending on an individual teacher’s needs:
    1. Option A: The lesson is offered with a complete set of graphs (from the MesoWest website) and all other material needed to complete the lesson. This option does not require any time spent retrieving data or generating graphs and allows teachers to focus their time on the analysis of graphs.
    2. Option B: The lesson is identical to “Option A” but replaces pre-constructed graphs with a link to a Google Sheet data set. This option allows teachers to incorporate student practice with generating graphs either by hand or using spreadsheet applications.
    3. Option C: This option is geared toward teachers that want to have their students interface with the MesoWest website. This website contains real-time and historical air quality data that are used in these lessons. Teachers choosing to use Option C can walk their students through retrieving the data directly from the MesoWest website for analysis. This option is a great choice for teachers that want their students to do one of the extension activities suggested in Lesson #4 or for teachers that want to design a project of their own that incorporates data from the MesoWest website.
  4. Teacher Materials

    1. Each lesson includes a “Teacher’s Lesson Plan” section that gives special instructions to help the teacher prepare the lesson. There is a “purpose” statement for each lesson that gives teachers the goal of the particular lesson and they should make sure students achieve this goal.  Each of the lessons are broken down into specific instructions for Options A, B and C.

  5. Student Materials

    1. Each lesson includes a series of worksheets that students use to complete the lesson. Student worksheets come in two forms. One form is for use by students with access to laptops or other technology that allows them to write directly onto a Google Docs document. The other form is a printable PDF that is ready for students to fill in by hand. Teachers may choose the form that works best for their students. 

Last Updated: 2/17/26