Classroom and Lab Activities

This collection of teaching materials allows for the sharing of ideas and activities within the community of geoscience teachers. Do you have a favorite teaching activity you'd like to share? Please help us expand this collection by contributing your own teaching materials.


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Working with Climate Change Data
Eileen Herrstrom, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
This activity takes place in a laboratory setting and requires ~1.5-2 hours to complete. Students use spreadsheets to create graphs data related to climate change: sunspots, insolation, carbon dioxide, and global ...

On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Collection This activity is part of the On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Teaching Activities collection.
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OGGM-Edu Glaciology Lab 1: What Makes a Glacier?
Lizz Ultee, Middlebury College
This is a three-part class or lab activity that challenges students to define what a glacier is, how it differs from other parts of the cryosphere (such as sea ice), and what kinds of glaciers there are in the ...

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Tracking Sea Level and Paleoenvironments with Fossils
Pete Berquist, Virginia Peninsula Community College
Students use the Paleobiology Database Navigator to examine changes in sea level in southeastern North America throughout the Cretaceous, Paleogene, and Neogene Periods. They will plot the change in distribution of ...

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Greenhouse Effect Lab
Krista Larsen, Carleton College
In this lab, students measure temperature changes inside soda bottles (one with CO2 added, the other with only air inside) as incandescent light is shined on them to model the Greenhouse Effect.

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Modeling Rare Plant Distributions Using ArcGIS
Elizabeth Crook, University of California-Irvine
In this activity, students work with rare plant occurrence data from the Nature Reserve of Orange County, California to create species distribution maps in ArcGIS. Students are given shapefiles of species ...

Did Early Farmers Alter Climate?
Sue Swanson, Beloit College
The overarching goal of this exercise is for students to explore the early anthropogenic hypothesis, which claims that early agriculture had a substantial impact on greenhouse gases and global climate thousands of ...

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Voyage of the Arctic Project
Mallory Stone; Tamie Jovanelly, Berry College
This is a two-week long project geared towards middle school earth science teachers. This should be used towards the end of a school year when students have background knowledge on the following topics: plate ...

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Arctic Climate Curriculum, Activity 1: Exploring the Arctic
Karin Kirk, Freelance Science Writer and Geoscientist; Anne Gold, University of Colorado at Boulder
This activity introduces students to the Arctic, including different definitions of the Arctic and exploration of the Arctic environment and Arctic people. Students set out on a virtual exploration of the geography ...

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Arctic Climate Curriculum, Activity 3: Exploring Arctic Climate Data
Karin Kirk, Freelance Science Writer and Geoscientist; Anne Gold, University of Colorado at Boulder
Students dig into authentic Arctic climate data to unravel some causes and effects related to the seasonal melting of the snowpack. In particular, students learn about albedo and its relationship to snowmelt. This ...

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Iceberg of Antarctica
Turtle Haste, Desert Ridge Middle School; Diane Nihart, Albuquerque Public Schools
After exploring the various hands-on, art, kinesthetic activities, and electronic resources after reading the book: Iceberg of Antarctica by Marlo Garnsworthy, students will develop, create, and produce their own ...

On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Collection This activity is part of the On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Teaching Activities collection.
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