Environmental Systems Literacy for Kids Glossary
All the key terms from this curriculum, written in kid-friendly language first. Some words are mostly for older learners, but the ideas still matter across the course. The Introduced column shows where each word first appears.
| Term | Kid-friendly meaning | Introduced |
|---|---|---|
| Accessibility | Making information, tools, places, or presentations easier for more people to use. | Week 18 |
| Adaptation | A change that helps a living thing or community handle conditions better. This is a simplified learning definition. | Week 8 |
| AI-edited | Changed with AI help, such as fixing an image, voice, video, or summary. | Environmental Checkpoint |
| AI-generated | Made mostly by an AI tool instead of by a person alone. | Environmental Checkpoint |
| Air quality | How clean or polluted the air is. | Curriculum Overview |
| Albedo | How reflective a surface is. Ice, snow, and clouds bounce more sunlight away, while darker surfaces absorb more energy. | Optional Week 1 |
| Amplifying loop | A feedback loop that makes the first change grow bigger. Example: ice melts, darker water shows, more heat is absorbed, and more ice melts. | Week 9 |
| Attribution | Giving credit for facts, images, quotes, data, ideas, sources, or AI help you used. | Week 18 |
| Balancing loop | A feedback loop that pushes back and helps a system settle down. Example: more prey can lead to more predators, which can bring prey numbers back down. | Week 9 |
| Biodiversity | The variety of living things in one place or system. | Curriculum Overview |
| Biogeochemical cycle | A big Earth loop that moves an element like water, carbon, or nitrogen through air, water, soil, rocks, and living things. | Week 4 |
| Biological nutrient | A material that can safely go back into living systems, like food scraps, untreated wood, or paper. | Week 12 |
| Carbon cycle | The Earth loop that moves carbon through air, water, soil, rocks, and living things. Plants pull carbon from the air, and respiration or burning sends it back. | Week 5 |
| Carrying capacity | How much a system can support for a long time before it starts to break down. | Week 8 |
| Cause and effect | A way of explaining how one change leads to another. | Week 4 |
| Circular (loop) system | A loop system where one process's leftover becomes another process's input. Nature often works this way. Sometimes called "circular" by older learners. | Week 11 |
| Claim | An idea or statement that says something is true. | Environmental Checkpoint |
| Climate | The usual pattern of weather in a place over a long time. | Week 5 |
| Closed loop | A system where matter comes back around and gets used again instead of being thrown away. | Week 3 |
| Connection | A link showing how two parts affect or relate to each other. | Intro |
| Conservation | Protecting resources or living systems so they can stay healthy longer. | Curriculum Overview |
| Conservation of matter | Matter does not disappear. It only moves or changes form. Nothing really goes away. | Week 7 |
| Consumer | A living thing that gets energy by eating plants, animals, or both. | Week 2 |
| Cradle-to-cradle | Designing something so its materials become useful again at the end instead of turning into trash. | Week 12 |
| Cycle | A path that comes back around and repeats. | Week 3 |
| Data | Information collected to help answer a question, spot a pattern, or support a claim. | Environmental Checkpoint |
| Deepfake | A fake or heavily changed image, video, or audio clip made to seem real. | Environmental Checkpoint |
| Decomposer | A living thing, often tiny, that breaks down dead material and helps return it to the system. | Week 3 |
| Denitrification | Tiny microbes turning nitrogen compounds in soil back into nitrogen gas, which returns to the air. | Week 6 |
| Designed obsolescence | Making a product so it wears out, becomes outdated, or is hard to repair on purpose. | Week 13 |
| Direct air capture (DAC) | Machines that pull carbon dioxide out of the air. The idea exists, but it currently takes a lot of energy and money. | Optional Week 2 |
| Disinformation | False information shared on purpose to mislead people. | Environmental Checkpoint |
| Ecosystem | Living and nonliving parts of a place working together as a system. | Week 3 |
| Energy flow | The path energy takes as it moves through a system. | Week 1 |
| Entropy | An older learner word for why energy spreads out and becomes less useful after each change. A lot of it ends up as waste heat. | Week 2 |
| Environment | Everything around a living thing, including air, water, soil, living things, weather, and built places. | Intro |
| Environmental justice | Asking whether environmental harms and benefits are shared fairly, and noticing when some communities carry more risk than others. This is a simplified learning definition. | Caregiver and Facilitator Guidance |
| Evidence | Facts, observations, data, or examples that support a claim. | Environmental Checkpoint |
| Eutrophication | What happens when too much fertilizer-like material enters water. Algae grow fast, oxygen drops, and many living things struggle. | Week 6 |
| Evaporation | Liquid water turning into water vapor and rising into the air. | Week 4 |
| Feedback loop | A loop where a change comes back and affects the system again. | Week 9 |
| Flow | Something moving through a system, such as water, energy, air, waste, or information. | Intro |
| Fossil fuel | Coal, oil, or natural gas, old stored carbon from long ago. Burning them releases that carbon quickly. | Week 5 |
| Geoengineering | Very large human attempts to change part of Earth's climate system on purpose, such as reflecting more sunlight or removing carbon dioxide from the air. | Optional Week 2 |
| Greenwashing | Making a product, message, or company seem more environmentally helpful than the evidence really shows. | Environmental Checkpoint |
| Haber-Bosch process | The industrial way humans turn nitrogen gas from the air into ammonia for fertilizer. | Week 6 |
| Habitat | The place where a living thing finds what it needs to live. | Week 3 |
| Hydrological cycle | Another name for the water cycle. | Week 4 |
| Ice-albedo feedback | An amplifying loop where melting ice exposes darker ground or water, which absorbs more sunlight and causes more melting. | Optional Week 1 |
| Industrial symbiosis | When one factory's leftover becomes another factory's useful input. | Week 12 |
| Interdependence | A situation where living things or system parts depend on one another. | Week 3 |
| Linear (straight-line) system | A straight-line system: take, make, use, and throw away. Sometimes called "linear" by older learners. | Week 11 |
| Maximum sustainable yield (MSY) | The biggest amount you can take from a renewable resource each cycle without shrinking it over time. | Week 10 |
| Microplastic | A tiny piece of plastic, smaller than 5 millimeters, that can stay in soil, water, and food chains for a long time. | Week 7 |
| Misinformation | False or misleading information shared by mistake. | Environmental Checkpoint |
| Mitigation | An action that tries to reduce the size of a problem or slow future harm. This is a simplified learning definition. | Optional Week 2 |
| Modular design | Designing something from parts that can be swapped or replaced one at a time. | Week 13 |
| Nitrogen fixation | Turning nitrogen gas from the air into forms plants can use. | Week 6 |
| Nonrenewable resource | A resource that takes so long to replace that people can use it up faster than it returns. | Week 7 |
| Open loop | A system where matter moves one way and leaves as waste instead of coming back into the system. | Week 3 |
| Organism | One living thing. | Week 2 |
| Overshoot | When a population or load grows past what the system can handle. | Week 9 |
| Part | One piece of a larger system. | Intro |
| Photosynthesis | Plants using sunlight to make sugar from carbon dioxide and water. | Week 1 |
| Pollution | Harmful material or energy added to a place where it causes problems. | Week 6 |
| Predator-prey cycle | A balancing loop where prey numbers affect predator numbers and predator numbers affect prey numbers. | Week 9 |
| Producer | A living thing, such as a plant, that uses sunlight to make its own food. | Week 1 |
| Renewable resource | A resource that can return or grow back fast enough to be used again if the system stays healthy. | Week 10 |
| Resource | Something useful that a system needs or uses, such as water, soil, sunlight, fuel, or materials. | Intro |
| Right to Repair | The idea that people should be able to fix the products they own instead of replacing them right away. | Week 13 |
| Runoff | Water that flows across land instead of soaking in, carrying soil, chemicals, and other materials with it. | Week 4 |
| Source | Where information, data, an image, or a claim came from. | Source Notes |
| Steady state | A condition where a system stays fairly even because what comes in and what goes out are balanced. | Week 8 |
| Stewardship | Taking care of a place, system, or resource in a responsible way. | Curriculum Overview |
| Stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI) | A proposed geoengineering idea where reflective particles are placed high in the sky to bounce a small part of sunlight away. | Optional Week 2 |
| Sustainability | Using systems and resources in ways that can keep working over time. This is a simplified learning definition. | Curriculum Overview |
| Sustainable yield | An amount you can take again and again from a renewable resource without using it up. | Week 10 |
| System | A group of connected parts that affect one another. | Intro |
| Systems Log | The notebook or journal where students record observations, drawings, and questions about a system. | Week 1 |
| Technical nutrient | A material like glass, steel, or aluminum that can stay in a reuse or recycling loop if it is collected and processed well. | Week 12 |
| Termination shock | A rapid rebound of warming that could happen if a sunlight-blocking geoengineering method were used and then suddenly stopped. | Optional Week 2 |
| Thermodynamics, First Law | Energy cannot be created or destroyed. It can only move or change form. | Week 2 |
| Thermodynamics, Second Law | Every energy change spreads some energy out and makes it less useful for doing work. | Week 2 |
| Throughput | An older learner word for how much matter and energy move through a system over time. | Week 11 |
| Tipping point | A threshold where a system starts changing on its own and becomes hard to turn back. | Optional Week 1 |
| Tradeoff | A choice where you gain one thing but also give up, spend, or risk something else. | Week 14 |
| Tragedy of the commons | What can happen when many people share one resource and each person taking more ends up damaging it for everyone. | Week 10 |
| Transpiration | Water moving out of plant leaves into the air as vapor. | Week 4 |
| Trophic efficiency | An older learner term for how only a small part of energy moves from one level of a food web to the next. | Week 2 |
| Unintended consequence | Something that happens because of a choice or action, even though it was not the main plan. | Week 14 |
| Water quality | How clean, safe, and healthy water is for people and living things. | Week 4 |
| Watershed | The land area where water drains to the same stream, river, lake, or bay. | Week 4 |
| Weather | What the air and sky are doing right now or over a short time, such as sunny, rainy, windy, hot, or cold. | Week 1 |