The Earth science strand of the IQWST project consists of three units, each emphasizing fundamental concepts for students’ understanding of the Earth and its place in the Universe.  In the 6th grade, students learn about the interaction of the water cycle and the rock cycle to create landforms.  In the 7th grade, students learn about the combined role of thermal energy from the sun and the cycling of water in driving large-scale patterns of atmospheric movement (exemplified by the Indian Monsoon).  In the 8th grade, students learn about large-scale geological processes on Earth and other planets through examining plate tectonics on Earth and contrasting its unique occurrence to other cooling planetary bodies.

The approach of the Earth science unit, and IQWST in general, is to emphasize the interconnectedness of ideas across as well as within disciplines. For example, in the 6th grade Earth science unit students will re-visit the importance of phases of matter introduced in the 6th grade chemistry unit.  The 7th grade Earth science unit on the interaction of thermal energy and the global cycling of water builds on an earlier physics unit on energy and energy transformation.

In addition to emphasizing enduring scientific ideas, the Earth science units give students experience with important scientific practices. These include working with models, constructing scientific explanations, engaging in argumentation and debate, analyzing authentic data gathered either from students' own investigations or captured within complex datasets, and presenting ideas to peers in an interactive environment. Students learn scientific ideas by engaging in authentic scientific inquiry practices. These practices are also built within and across disciplines.  For example, systems thinking is introduced in the 6th grade biology unit as students work with food webs.  Subsequently, 6th, 7th, and 8th grade Earth science incrementally build a systems approach to engage and explain Earth phenomena.

Technology plays an important part of each of the units. For example, students work with My World GIS in the 7th and 8th grade units.  This software allows students to work with authentic data sets of both regional and global scale.  This large-scale data analysis (i.e. Indian climate data, global tectonic data) is interwoven with numerous hands-on labs and investigations to make formerly inaccessible spatial and temporal phenomena more accessible to students.