We are midway through Earth Science Week 2026. This year’s theme, “Critical Minerals for a Thriving Society,” acknowledges the important role that earth science plays in our society. To go along with the theme, a team at AmericaView has been putting together classroom lesson plans, outreach activities, and maps. These materials help introduce and reinforce the importance of critical minerals in our daily lives. Watch this 2-minute video created by the American Geosciences Institute (embedded below). It gives a good introduction to what critical minerals are and how they are connected to our daily lives.
New Lesson Plan
This year as part of the GY25 AmericaView grant, a group of four states: Delaware, Iowa, Kansas, and Vermont, have been working together to produce education-ready digital toolkits for use in K-12 classrooms, community outreach evens, workshops, and conferences. Over the next few months, IowaView will be highlighting different products of the toolkits.
In celebration of Earth Science Week 2026, below is one of the new classroom lesson plans, “Critical Minerals – A Lesson for Middle School STEM.” The lesson explores what critical minerals (CM) are, how society uses CM, technology’s role in identifying CM, and careers associated with the CM sector. This lesson takes 60 mins to complete but can be scaled up with extended learning activities. The lesson plan structure includes a Warm-up, a Reading Activity, a Video, Six Activities, a Career Exploration, and a Wrap-up. It also includes an assessment and crossword puzzle based on the activities. The six activities include: 1) Critical Mineral Investigation, 2) Critical Minerals in Your State, 3) Geospatial Technologies Explore Mining Waste for Minerals, 4) Minerals’ Role in Sustainable Energy Sources. 5) Battery Type Investigation, and 6) Geospatial technologies produced perspectivity maps.
This lesson is targeted to fufill the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) performance exepectations: MS-ESS3-1, MS-ESS3-3, MS-ESS3-4, and MS-ESS2-1. It also fufills National Geographic Standards 3, 7, 11, 14, 15, and 16.
Please check out the NEW AmericaView Critical Minerals Lesson:
Critical Minerals – A Lesson for Middle School STEM – pdf version
Critical Minerals – A Lesson for Middle School STEM – word document version
Finally, we are always interested in getting feedback. Please leave a comment below or send an email if you have feedback. For example, what worked, what didn’t work, or suggestions on how we can improve the lesson and activities.
Happy Earth Science Week 2026!
