The Sleeping Mountain

Scenario by Janice Cooper, revised by Ramya Chari and curated by Dr. Glenn Jaecks (U.C. Davis) - Starting Point page by R. Teed (SERC).

This activity received a gold star rating from a Panel Peer Review

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This resource received a gold-star rating from a Panel Peer Review

These materials were reviewed using face-to-face NSF-style review panel of geoscience and geoscience education experts to review groups of resources addressing a single theme. Panelists wrote reviews that addressed the criteria:

scientific accuracy and currency
usability and
pedagogical effectiveness

Reviewers rated the resources:

Accept
Accept with minor revisions
Accept with major revisions, or
Reject.

They also singled out those resources they considered particularly exemplary, which are given a gold star rating.

Following the panel meetings, the conveners wrote summaries of the panel discussion for each resource; these were transmitted to the creator, along with anonymous versions of the reviews. Relatively few resources were accepted as is. In most cases, the majority of the resources were either designated as 1) Reject or 2) Accept with major revisions. Resources were most often rejected for their lack of completeness to be used in a classroom or they contained scientific inaccuracies.

This material is replicated on a number of sites as part of the SERC Pedagogic Service Project

Summary

In this role-playing scenario, students represent townspeople whose lives and livelihoods are endangered by an active volcano that may or may not erupt in the near future. They must debate whether to invest in or to abandon their town. The site outlines the roles and includes a description of the original, real volcano that inspired the scenario, Mammoth Mountain in California, with a list of links. Before the debate, the students must research monitoring volcano activity and write a paper about it.

Learning Goals

Students will:

Examine methods used to monitor volcanoes.
Evaluate the risks of volcanic activity in a fictitious setting
Experience the ways in which volcanoes affect the lives of the people living near them.

Context for Use

The debate should take one discussion period and student preparation a little longer than that.

Teaching Materials

The Sleeping Mountain scenario is well-developed and includes links, scientific background, and characters. Students will need access to research materials, including Internet-capable computers. It is interesting to compare the resort's Ski Trail Map and the USGS Tree Kill Map. Variants of one or both of these should be given to certain students (depending on their perspective of the area).

Teaching Notes and Tips

This exercise is ready to run, although educators may wish to customize the scenario a bit. I would add the USGS Mammoth Mountain Page to the "required" list.

Assessment

There is a 3-page paper due the day of the debate on volcano monitoring that will help prepare the students. The assignment includes links to helpful advice on writing papers.

References and Resources

An interesting counterpoint to the links about the geologic hazard at Mammoth Mountain provided in the Sleeping Mountain Scenario are these optimistic tourist-business sites. Understandably, none of them mention the active volcano under the resort.

Other approaches to role-playing that involve volcanoes are: