Making the "black box" model more transparent part of Activities
Students will work with a "mystery box" to determine it's contents through an inductive reasoning process in order to better understand how models are used for geoscientific ways of knowing.

Count the Vowels part of Activities
Students are given a list of words and told to count the vowels and turn the sheet over. They are then asked to list the words. When they fail they discover how the words are arranged and find it easy to remember ...

Metacognition Training through Think-Aloud Pair Problem Solving [TAPPS]: Two Lessons about Rivers part of Activities
Attached is a description of how to use "Think-aloud Pair Problem Solving" in a classroom. It is followed with two lesson plans on the topic of rivers.

Reading Reflections part of Activities
Reading reflections are submitted online each day before class and after completing a reading assignment. Three short questions guide the student to reflect more deeply on their understanding.

Learning About Thinking and Thinking About Learning part of Affective Domain:Activities
A document about learning provides background information for classroom activities to help students be more intentional about their thinking and learning

Challenging Pre-Conceptions part of Activities
Students carry into class pre-conceptions based on stories they've heard, articles they've read and experiences they've had. One of the best opportunities to teach metacognition is at a 'gotcha' moment when they come to realize their pre-conception is amiss.

What Do You Know Now? part of Activities
An opportunity to offer metacognitive teaching arises from the simple question "what do you know now that you didn't before (whatever)"? This simple question can be asked after a reading, a lecture, a lab or other unit of student activity. The thrust is to force the student to consider what they've been exposed to and reflect on what they've learned. Did the activity change their opinion? Did this activity help them identify an analogy?

Exam #1 part of Activities
The first exam in a class holds an opportunity for metacognitive teaching. At this point the student is open to hearing your message, especially if their outcome is less than they had hoped. This example walks through some strategies for implementing metacognitive teaching wrapped around the first exam.

Peer Instruction part of Activities
Peer instruction may offer some of the richest opportunities for metacognitive teaching. Reciprocal (peer) teaching forces the instructor to use a whole series of metacognitive processes such as determining what ...

Metacognitive Prompting Intervention - Science part of Activities
The model is build on the ideas that students who observe a model, try the thinking task on their own with support, then try another similar thinking task with fading support, will develop self-regulation of the ...

Reflection After Exam #1 part of Activities
Students did poorly on the first exam, so I borrowed and modified this exercise. It is intended to get them to think about what THEY can do to improve performance on future exams. The original idea came from Marsha ...

Guided Discovery and Scoring Rubric for Petrographic Analysis of a Thin Section part of Activities
A guided discovery approach is used to "unpack" the methods and observations used by "master" petrographers in the petrographic analysis of a thin section. A series of spread sheets are used to ...

Reflection on the process of science & geoscience part of Activities
This is an activity for early in the semester that asks student to reflect on their understanding of the process of science, participate in an activity about the process of science, and then re-reflect on their ...

Urban Farming, Soil Science and Me - Reflection 1 part of Service Learning:Activities
This reflection assignment is used within a service learning project to bridge three fundamental categories: community service, personal growth and course content. Reflections are designed to gauge students' ...

Drawing analogies part of Activities
Students write analogies, describe similarities and differences between analog and target and draw inferences.

GO Inquire System part of Activities
GO Inquire is an online tool used to develop knowledge and skills of 4th grade science students in the concepts of erosion, transportation and deposition.