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Hotspot Lesson: Final Project

Jamie A. Russell, Scripps Institution of Oceanography

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This activity was selected for the On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Teaching Collection

Resources in this top level collection a) must have scored Exemplary or Very Good in all five review categories, and must also rate as “Exemplary” in at least three of the five categories. The five categories included in the peer review process are

  • Scientific Accuracy
  • Alignment of Learning Goals, Activities, and Assessments
  • Pedagogic Effectiveness
  • Robustness (usability and dependability of all components)
  • Completeness of the ActivitySheet web page

For more information about the peer review process itself, please see http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/review.html.



This page first made public: Jan 29, 2008

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

Summary

The Hotspot Project is a the culminating assignment for a series of activities about hotspots and plate motions. The activity series includes (in order): Relative Dating, Hotspot Theory and Plate Velocities, Mantle Plumes, and Samoan Hotspot. Students form groups to work on a assigned hotspot chain. Each group gets to study a seamount trail from around the world and needs to present 15 slides that each have 3 main points and one nice graphical illustration or image.

Hotspot Project

Learning Goals

  • Apply techniques learned in previous lessons to determine the age-distance relationship for an assignment island/seamount chain.

    • Context for Use

    This activity was designed for use in a high school earth science class but is also appropriate for introductory level college geoscience courses. The goal of this lesson is for the students to formulate hypotheses based on evidence from Samoa and make predictions based on their hypotheses. Lesson duration: The project requires three days to work in class and two days of presentations, but the students will have to do some work outside of class.

    Description and Teaching Materials

    The Project Instructions is used to lay out the ground rules for the project.

    Each group, consisting of 4-5 students, gets to study a seamount trail from around the world and needs to present 15 slides that each have 3 main points and one nice graphical illustration or image.

    Allow the students to break into groups. Once the groups are established provide them with a seamount chain and associated hotspot to study. Some possible hotspots are Reunion, Marquesas, Caroline, McDonald, Kerguelen and Galapagos. The presentation should be about 10 minutes long.

    Instructions for the activity are on the Hotspot Activity Assignment Sheet which also includes places for each group to list out its members and the chain they have been assigned. Students use the Notes Sheet to help organize the information that will go into each slide in the presentation. Once all the information is collected on this sheet the PowerPoint slides can be made.

    Hotspot Project
  • These are the instructions for the group project on a assigned hotspot chain. Each group gets to study a seamount trail from around the world and needs to present 15 slides that each have 3 main points and one nice graphical illustration or image. Download ...
  • This is the assignment sheet for the group hotspot presentations. The students should from groups to work in and get each members phone number in case it's necessary to work outside of class time on the project. Also this sheet provides the specific expectations for the project. Download ...
  • This is a notes sheet to help organize the information that will go into each slide in the presentation. Once all the information is collected on this sheet the power point slides can be made. Download ...

    • Teaching Notes and Tips

    It is a good idea to split up the work on this sheet among group members so that each person is responsible for providing the information for a few slides.

    Assessment

    An Assessment Rubric is provided to help score the PowerPoint presentations given by each student group. Each group should make sure that they have met all the necessary criteria.

    References and Resources

    Lesson Materials

    Project Instructions
    Hotspot Activity Assignment Sheet
    Notes Sheet
    Assessment Rubric

    ERESE Resource Matrices

    Formation of Seamounts
    Hotspots and Plate Motion
    Volcanoes

    Outside Links on Hotspots

    Wikipedia
    Google

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    « Hotspot Lesson: Relative Dating       Hotspot Lesson: Hotspot Theory and Plate Velocities »