Enrichment Ideas for Our Changing
Earth
Expand the boundaries of your kit study. Encourage your
students' curiosity with these outlets for extending
engagement in research.
The Rock Cycle
BBC Education offers ten easy
extension activities that illustrate some of the key
concepts from the rock cycle.
Graveyard Rockwalk
On this page, take a look at
the sixth option, the Graveyard Rockwalk. It is an
excellent example of using (respectfully!) a cemetery as a
geologic museum on your own doorstep. The creator of this
virtual tour includes tips on recognizing rock types in
headstones but look especially at the instances where she
encourages using the dates on the monuments as indicators of
how the rocks weather over time. (See the Earth Materials
Curriculum Companion under Enrichment for other
rockwalks and tips on creating your own.)
Earth Science Lesson Activities
The Society of Sedimentary
Geologists maintains this list of lesson activities prepared
by science educators. The grade level appropriateness of the
activities (ranging from lower elementary to high school) is
indicated.
Life Along the Faultline
Webcasts, actual news
footage, personal accounts, images, and other stories and
resources about California earthquakes compiled by The
Exploratorium.
A Geologist's Lifetime Field List
This is a well organized
archive of links to information, travelogues,
and pictures of many classic examples of the world's
geologic wonders (and
some other interesting natural phenomena). See weathering
and erosion on a
grand scale and in some of their most spectacular forms.
Borneo Caving Expedition Online Educational Project
The cave is a spectacular
landform, the result of large-scale weathering and erosion.
This friendly site created by a high-school teacher and
geared towards his students tells the tale of a cave
exploration project in the rainforests of Borneo. It's a
rich site to explore if you're curious about the animals and
mineral wonders found within the earth, or would like more info on
caving safely.
Dive and Discover
This site immerses you
completely in three undersea diving expeditions. Earth
scientists explore the mid-ocean ridge and take you along
for the ride and a live look at the volcanic action at that
tectonic spreading center. Also includes video clips and
annotated slide shows of science research in action.
GEMS Guides
While GEMS guides (created by the Lawrence Hall of Science)
may not represent the full scope of coverage that you may
want at
your grade, many of them are useful resources for extending
investigations.
Stories in Stone
The Lawrence Hall of Science recommends this unit for
grades 4-9. "Stories in Stone" is a well designed and
substantial unit that
encourages discovery of rocks and minerals. While it
overlaps with some of the lower grade (properties of rocks
and minerals)
kits, its most creative sessions tie in better with concepts
more
appropriate to the upper grades. The bulk of the unit
emphasizes observing
properties of hand samples for a better understanding of the
complicated
processes that form them, and what this tells us about the
earth's changing
crust. It's an especially good accompaniment to parts of
STC's Catastrophic
Events kit.
River Cutters
The Lawrence Hall of Science recommends this unit for
grades 6-9, but it can
easily be adjusted up or down for your students. "River
Cutters"
is a well designed and substantial unit encouraging
exploration into how
water shapes landforms over very long periods of time. Much
like STC's 4th
grade Land and Water kit, this unit explores how real-world
river systems
work and how humans can (or cannot!) impact and control
these dynamic
systems. This unit, however, uses diatomaceous earth (one
of the materials in Land and Water) exclusively, which is
better suited for the scale of the model being created.
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