Teaching Activities

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




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Field Presentation
Sarah Hall, College of the Atlantic; Calla Schmidt, University of San Francisco; Becca Walker, Mt. San Antonio College
During the E-STEM Field Course, each student was responsible for a field presentation related to a geology, geomorphology, hydrology, and/or ecology topic specific to the Sierras or Owens Valley. Depending on the ...

On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Collection This activity is part of the On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Teaching Activities collection.
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Petrographic Microscope Home Kit for Smartphones
Lynne Elkins, University of Nebraska at Lincoln
This is a useful set of design instructions to build a home microscope kit for illustrating the properties of polarizing/petrographic microscopes with a smartphone camera. It can be used for any number of class ...

Investigating Rock Classification
Sean Bryan, Colorado State University; Megan Plenge, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Average inquiry level: Structured This lab activity provides an introduction to rock classification. Classification is useful because it allows scientists to identify patterns and organize information. In this lab, ...

Creating a Partial Pressure Diagram for the Cu-CO2-O2-H2O System
Terri Woods, East Carolina University
Students will be guided through the procedure for creating a partial-pressure diagram in the low-temperature system Cu-CO2-O2-H2O system for the minerals cuprite, tenorite, native copper, azurite, and malachite. ...

On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Collection This activity is part of the On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Teaching Activities collection.
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Understanding Earthquakes: Comparing seismograms
Jennifer Pickering
Introductory lesson that contextualizes how multiple instruments provide a more complete picture on an event.

Distribution and Fate of Volatile Organic Contaminants (VOCs)
Federico Sinche, Loyola University Chicago
Volatile organic contaminants (VOCs) are organic compounds generated from different industrial processes around the world. VOCs are ubiquitous contaminants, and some can be genotoxic, mutagenic and act as endocrine disruptors, thus representing a risk to ecosystems and human health. High levels of VOCs have been reported in industrialized countries such as the US. In this module, students will explore how the distribution of VOCs has changed over time. Students will then compare types and concentrations of VOCs among the US states in the context of geography, urbanization, industrialization, and fossil emissions as contributing factors of air pollution.

Environmental Pollution & Public Health
Alanna Lecher, Lynn University
Environmental health is a field of study within public health that is concerned with human-environment interactions, and specifically, how the environment influences public well-being. In this module, students will explore how environmental pollution impacts public health through comparing cancer rates of areas with known environmental pollutants to the national average through a t-test. Students can further their knowledge by comparing the concentrations of atmospheric pollutants in areas with known sources to control sites without such sources. Project EDDIE modules are designed with an A-B-C structure to make them flexible and adaptable to a range of student levels and course structures.

SIGkit (Software for Introductory Geophysics toolkit) for modelling and visualization of data
Charly Bank, University of Toronto
Predicting what geophysical data may look like and making basic inferences from data are critical learning outcomes of introductory geophysics courses whether they happen in a classroom or in a field setting. This ...

Modeling Folds: Block Diagrams and Structure Contours
Basil Tikoff, University of Wisconsin-Madison Naomi Barshi, University of Wisconsin-Madison Carol Ormand, SERC, Carleton College
Working in small groups, students build Play-Doh models of 3 folds (one upright, one vertical, one plunging). They slice each of their models to create 3D block models, sketch block diagrams of each fold, and ...

Sandy Hollow Virtual Field Geology Exercise
Andrew Laskowski, Montana State University-Bozeman
This is a Google Earth based virtual field exercise focused on Sandy Hollow, near Block Mountain and McCartney Mountain in southwest Montana. This is a classic field locality in the Montana portion of the Sevier ...

Online Field Experience Exemplary Collection This activity is part of the Teaching with Online Field Experiences Exemplary collection
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Mapping Plate Tectonic Boundaries
Nathan Toke, Utah Valley University
In this classroom activity, students will work in groups to observe how patterns of topography, bathymetry, earthquake locations and depths, and the location of volcanoes vary across regions of the Earth. They will ...

Virtual Marine Sediment Core Collection
Kristen St. John, James Madison University
A primary objective of marine science classes is to learn the location and formation of ocean sediment types. Nearly 50 years of scientific ocean drilling has produced a tremendous scientific collection of cores ...

Sonar water-column sounding and bathymetry mapping using fish finders
Robert Stewart, University of Houston-University Park
This water-body activity introduces students to the concept of a regular survey pattern, series of sonar measurements, and water-column and bottom mapping. The basic concept is to cast or tow a small sonar ...

Feedback Loops
Alexandra Davatzes, Temple University
This assignment requires students to use analogical reasoning to identify the key attributes, the causal structure, that make a feedback loop positive (by amplifying/accelerating the effect) or negative (by ...

Metamorphism and Metamorphic Rocks Lab F2F
Revising author: Maria Mercedes, Central Michigan University Original authors:Maria Mercedes, Central Michigan University; Stephanie Sabatini, North Carolina State University
Average inquiry level: Structured In this lab, students will use observations to compare and contrast metamorphic processes and features to draw conclusions about the geologic history of metamorphic rocks. As ...

Tectonic Plates Life Cycle Drag and Drop
Beverly Owens, Cleveland Early College High School; Molly Ludwick, Kings Mountain Middle School
This activity will allow students to manipulate Google slide textboxes to explore different features of tectonic plates and their interactions.

Fantastic Prehistoric Beasts and Where/When to Find Them
Marie Farson, Principia College; Sharon Gilberg, St. Petersburg College
Average inquiry level: Guided inquiry This inquiry-based lab explores the fossil record by having students use various characteristics of fossils to devise a classification scheme and eventually apply the geologic ...

On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Collection This activity is part of the On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Teaching Activities collection.
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Resistance to Weathering
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 this diagram and instructed to "Click on ...

Construction of a Triangular Stability Diagram
Terri Woods, East Carolina University
An interactive powerpoint presentation walks students step-by-step through the process of generating a triangular diagram for the system K2O-Al2O3-SiO2. A Word document provides the thermodynamic data and ...

On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Collection This activity is part of the On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Teaching Activities collection.
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Remote Mapping and Analytical data integration: Coal Creek quartzite and Ralston shear zone, Colorado
Kevin Mahan, University of Colorado at Boulder
This is a combination of an online mapping project (igneous and metamorphic terrain) and a subsequent module for group collaboration with associated analytical datasets (e.g., geochronology and microstructure). ...

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