The National Snow & Ice Data Center (NSIDC) is a great place to learn more about glaciers. Explore the life cycle of a glacier, review the components and types of glaciers, take a look at current glacier data, and browse through the extensive image gallery. You may want to share this resource with your students.
How Glaciers Work provides a concise overview of the formation, anatomy, effects and future of glaciers.
Resources from the National Park Service will give you a strong foundation for teaching about glaciers. Glacier Basics comes from Rocky Mountain National Park. From Glacier National Park, Overview of Glaciers shares facts about glaciers and Glacial Geology provides photos clearly showing glacially carved landscapes in the park. Data from A Closer Look at Glacier National Park reveals changes in glacial surface area. From Kenai Fjords National Park, Glaciers and Glacier Features describes a unique park where over 50 percent of the land is covered in ice.
The United States Geological Survey (USGS) has informative sections on Glaciers and Icecaps and Glaciers and the Water Cycle as part of its Water Science School. The USGS is particularly useful for answering students' questions that come up as they study about glaciers, and for correcting misconceptions about glaciers that students may have.
Crash Course: Glaciers is a fast-paced video with helpful animations that cover the basics of glaciers, the processes of glaciation, and the benefits of glaciers to Earth's systems.
Because glaciers are so sensitive to environmental changes, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has designated glaciers as a key climate indicator related to the effects of climate change. Take a look at the EPA's data regarding changes in glaciers and ice sheets.
PBS LearningMedia
PBS LearningMedia's glacier resources are designed to be used by educators in the classroom and include video, interactives, discussion questions, lesson plan, or background reading.
Documenting Glacial Change is a terrific interactive resource for grades 5 and up, with an excellent collection of side-by-side glacier images showing change over time.
Glaciers is an interactive feature full of essential information about glacier composition, location and movement, for grades 6 and up.
Investigating Glacier Flow is full lesson plan for grades 6 and up, where students analyze radar data to determine how glaciers shape Earth's systems.
High Altitude Glaciers in the Tropics takes students to the Andes Mountains to explore glaciers in tropical latitudes and learn how they help scientists study climate.
Glacier Power is a terrific middle-school curriculum produced by the Alaska Satellite Facility. There are ten lessons, each with vocabulary, worksheets, discussion questions and hands-on projects. An additional lesson answers the question Why Do Scientists Study Glaciers?
Ice Ice Baby is a complete unit of lesson plans and activities about glacier dynamics, icebergs, sea level change and more. This site provides a wealth of great resources for teachers.
Arête (above) and erratic (below) – USGS
From the University of Oregon, glacier education resources and lesson plans are available for grades K-5 and grades 6-8.
TeachEngineering invites students to learn about glaciers as agents of erosion in the upper-elementary lesson Glaciers, Water and Wind, Oh My!
Teacher Planet offers a collection of glacier lesson plans, printables, worksheets and experiments. Worksheets are also available at 3D Geography.
At NeoK12, you'll find classroom glacier resources including lesson plans, videos and slide presentations.
Geography All The Way has a series of glacier lesson plans with helpful diagrams and photos illustrating alpine glacial processes and erosional and depositional landforms. For older students, the lesson plan Where Have All The Glaciers Gone? includes links for further exploration.
This teacher-created interactive glacier quiz is useful as a self-correcting practice or assessment tool.
Hands-on projects can help students understand glacier concepts in a tactile, engaging way. Take a look at these project ideas for the classroom:
An excellent source for photos and images of glaciers of all types, as well as glacial landforms and location maps, is the USGS's comprehensive Glossary of Glacial Terminology. Each term is accompanied by photos. Another good source is the Glacier Photo Gallery at the National Snow and Ice Data Center.
Photo courtesy Gilhem Vellut, CC BY-SA 2.0, Kiddle Ency.
In time-lapse videos, satellite images from NASA show the movement of Earth's glaciers and ice sheets as seen from space.
How Glaciers Change the World is a fun introductory video for primary-grade students from Sci Show Kids. For older students, How Glaciers Move is an engaging video explaining glacial formation and movement.
Grinnell Glacier – USGS
If your students are interested in the work of glaciologists, you may want to direct them to profiles of glacier scientists at National Geographic and NASA Kids, or to the work of young students currently helping with glacier research.
For older students, the University of Colorado's glacier simulation explores the impact of environmental variables on whether glaciers advance, retreat, or stay at equilibrium. Another good resource for secondary students, Antarctic Glaciers, contains photos and facts on glacial mass balance, ice cores, landforms, ice streams and more.
One of the most effective ways for students to see how glaciers have changed in the last 50-100 years is by observing side-by-side image pairs. You may want to show your class the repeat photos from these sources: