Teaching Activities

These teaching activities have a strong spatial thinking component. Search the collection to find activities suitable for your classes.



Results 1 - 20 of 5950 matches

Discover Plate Tectonics
Angela Daneshmand, Santiago Canyon College
This is a student-centered activity for a synchronous online course where students access google slides to complete during a video conferencing session (eg. Zoom) in break out rooms. Students will be introduced to ...

On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Collection This activity is part of the On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Teaching Activities collection.
Learn more about this review process.

Explore Real Data from an Ice Core
Jason Cervenec, Ohio State University-Main Campus; Stacy Porter, Wittenberg University
Ice core data allow students to explore a number of patterns while learning that researchers need to gather and interpret evidence to understand Earth's past. Students will explore core data collected in ...

On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Collection This activity is part of the On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Teaching Activities collection.
Learn more about this review process.

Sustainability Metrics
Natalie Hunt, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
Sustainability is a complex term applied to many different contexts in a variety of ways. As a result, it can be challenging to determine how sustainable something really is. In this module, students will use an ...

On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Collection This activity is part of the On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Teaching Activities collection.
Learn more about this review process.

Geological Mapping of a Virtual Landscape
Mark Helper, The University of Texas at Austin
This virtual mapping exercise is part video game, part map prediction and interpretation. You will navigate a virtual landscape to "collect" outcrops and their field notes, recording your observations on ...

Online Field Experience Exemplary Collection This activity is part of the Teaching with Online Field Experiences Exemplary collection
See the activity page for details.

Lesson 2: My Water Footprint (Middle School)
Kai Olson-Sawyer, GRACE Communications Foundation
This lesson centers on a deeper exploration of the water footprint associated with food. Students learned in Lesson 1 that virtual water, especially as it relates to food, typically makes up the majority of their ...

On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Collection This activity is part of the On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Teaching Activities collection.
Learn more about this review process.

Climate Change: Past & Present, Local & Global
Cheryl Manning, OrbWeaver Consulting, LLC; Rondi Davies, CUNY Queensborough Community College
Average inquiry level: Guided inquiry In this laboratory exercise for introductory geology or environmental science courses, students use data to examine climate change in their local environment. They compare ...

On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Collection This activity is part of the On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Teaching Activities collection.
Learn more about this review process.

Climate Change Module
This module was initially developed by O'Reilly, C.M., D.C. Richardson, and R.D. Gougis. 15 March 2017. Project EDDIE: Climate Change. Project EDDIE Module 8, Version 1.
Scientists agree that the climate is changing and that human activities are a primary cause for this change through increased emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. There have been times in ...

On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Collection This activity is part of the On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Teaching Activities collection.
Learn more about this review process.

Assessing the Risk of Invasive Species Using Community Science Data
Matthew Heard, Belmont University
This module introduces students who are already familiar with GIS to doing comparative analyses with large-scale community science (often called citizen science) data sets. Students will explore how we can use ...

On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Collection This activity is part of the On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Teaching Activities collection.
Learn more about this review process.

Teleconnections
Kaitlin Farrell, University of Georgia; Cayelan Carey, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State Univ
Ecosystems can be influenced by teleconnections, in which meteorological, societal, and/or ecological phenomenon link remote regions via cause and effect relationships. Because it is difficult to predict how ...

On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Collection This activity is part of the On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Teaching Activities collection.
Learn more about this review process.

Activity 6: Creating a Systems Diagram
Cameron Weiner, Middlebury College
In this activity students learn the steps to create a systems diagram and then apply those steps to create a systems diagram of the wastewater system. Students are provided with additional written information that ...

On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Collection This activity is part of the On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Teaching Activities collection.
Learn more about this review process.

What's in the Water? Lesson 4: Drinking Water & Environmental Justice
Kelsey Bitting, Elon University
In this lesson from the "What's in the Water?" PFAS Contamination Unit", students explore equity in drinking water across the U.S. For homework, students read segments of two recent reports ...

On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Collection This activity is part of the On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Teaching Activities collection.
Learn more about this review process.

Solving a Simple Drug Delivery Model Using Analytical, Linear Algebra, and Numeric Approaches
Matthew Leineweber, San Jose State University
The delivery of orally ingested drugs, such as pills and capsules, can be roughly modeled as a system of first-order ordinary differential equations (ODEs). This type of "drug-delivery model" can be ...

MATLAB Exemplary Collection This activity is part of the Teaching Computation in the Sciences Using MATLAB Exemplary Teaching Activities collection.
Learn more about this review process.

Lesson 3: The Value of a Water Footprint (Middle School)
Kai Olson-Sawyer, GRACE Communications Foundation
Session 1 of this lesson begins with a quick activity to get students thinking about their direct and virtual water use. It introduces a few new ideas for virtual water use that may surprise students, including the ...

On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Collection This activity is part of the On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Teaching Activities collection.
Learn more about this review process.

Geology of Yosemite Valley
Nicolas Barth, University of California-Riverside
This is a four-part module designed to be flexible in duration and student grade-level. (1) Geology of Yosemite Valley Virtual Field Trip. A 43-stop web-based Google Earth tour with embedded views, hyperlinked ...

Online Field Experience Exemplary Collection This activity is part of the Teaching with Online Field Experiences Exemplary collection
See the activity page for details.

Erosion in a River
Nicole LaDue, Northern Illinois University
× Formative assessment questions using a classroom response system ("clickers") can be used to reveal students' spatial understanding. Students are shown these diagrams and instructed to ...

On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Collection This activity is part of the On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Teaching Activities collection.
Learn more about this review process.

Geoethics Case Study: The Keystone Pipeline--Energy, Jobs or Environment?
Dave Mogk, Montana State University-Bozeman
David Mogk and Andrew Thorson, Montana State University-Bozeman Summary The Keystone Pipeline is a complex project that raises important environmental, economic, and international policy issues. Tar sands from ...

On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Collection This activity is part of the On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Teaching Activities collection.
Learn more about this review process.

Example Bisection Method Problem in MATLAB Grader
Roche de Guzman, Hofstra University
Here's an example of a text book problem in Numerical Methods that was converted to a MATLAB Grader assignment to assess students in a more automated and interactive way. Other problems can be modeled and ...

MATLAB Exemplary Collection This activity is part of the Teaching Computation in the Sciences Using MATLAB Exemplary Teaching Activities collection.
Learn more about this review process.

Engaging With Earthquake Hazard and Risk
Jennifer Pickering
This introductory activity engages learners in the study of earthquake hazards and the risk these hazards pose to humans in the communities in which we live. Learners will compare three maps of Anchorage, AK, depicting spatial information related to seismic hazards to generate questions about the factors that influence shaking intensity and damage to the built environment during earthquakes.

On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Collection This activity is part of the On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Teaching Activities collection.
Learn more about this review process.

Plate Tectonics: GPS Data, Boundary Zones, and Earthquake Hazards
Christopher Berg, Orange Coast College; Beth Pratt-Sitaula, EarthScope; Julie Elliott, Michigan State University
Students work with high precision GPS data to explore how motion near a plate boundary is distributed over a larger region than the boundary line on the map. This allows them to investigate how earthquake hazard ...

On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Collection This activity is part of the On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Teaching Activities collection.
Learn more about this review process.

Karst Hydrogeology and Geomorphology: A virtual field experience using Google Earth, GIS, and TAK
Rachel Bosch, Northern Kentucky University
Students will have the opportunity to select and virtually explore the hydrogeology and geomorphology of a karst landscape using Google Earth (or perhaps Google Mars or Google Moon if they so choose), lidar ...

Online Field Experience Exemplary Collection This activity is part of the Teaching with Online Field Experiences Exemplary collection
See the activity page for details.

Close

Looking for teaching materials?
Check our quick guide to Finding Earth Education Resources at SERC for some strategies that will help you make the most of the collections.

Remind me later Open the guide in a new tab