What do Cat Toys, Compression, and the Cascades have in Common?
DeeDee Okamoto, NSF NGF operated by EarthScope
Ignite curiosity about tectonics and earthquake hazards with hands-on interactive activities! Start with a cat tunnel to demonstrate how tectonic plates push and deform the land in the Pacific Northwest. Then, have ...

Highs and Lows: The Hand-Twist Model
Erin Smoak, American Meteorological Society
This 10–15 minute interactive demonstration introduces the Hand Twist Model, a simple yet powerful kinesthetic tool for teaching the motion of air around high- and low-pressure systems in the mid-latitudes of the ...

Sustainability Spotlights: Instructional resources for highlighting sustainability across the curriculum
Christy Visaggi, Georgia State University
Utilizing "spotlights" as resources for students has become an increasingly popular approach to broaden the visibility of who contributes to science such as is promoted by the Scientists Spotlights ...

Using the Visible Geology tools to strengthen students' geoscientific skills
Alyssa Abbey, California State University-Long Beach; Amy Weislogel, West Virginia University; Rory McFadden, Carleton College
Spatial and temporal reasoning are key components of geoscientific thinking, essential for both solving complex problems and preparing students for the modern workforce. We have created a set of activities that use ...

Mineral Metapuzzles
Fred Marton, Bergen Community College
When identifying minerals, students often try to take shortcuts by googling photos of the sample or by guessing what they think it is, then assigning the properties of their "solution" to the sample, even ...

What do Slinkies and the Earth's interior have in common?
Beth Pratt-Sitaula, EarthScope Consortium
Help your students learn more about how we study the Earth's interior without being able to take a field trip. It starts with Seismic Slinkie activities that show how waves travel differently in ...

Exploring Geoheritage in Education: Connecting Geoscience to Places People Value
Sequoyah McGee, American Geosciences Institute (AGI); LINDSAY MOSSA, American Geosciences Institute
The American Geosciences Institute (AGI), in collaboration with the U.S. Geological Survey's (USGS) Geoheritage Sites of the Nation project, has developed a Geoheritage Site Resource Collection to support ...

Earth History Timeline Activity
Molly Hunt, Ohio Department of Natural Resources
The Ohio Geological Survey has developed a hands-on activity for students to explore Earth's 4.6-billion-year history and key events. Each stop on a pre-measured timeline corresponds to key events, beginning ...

Poetry Prompts for Geoscience Educators
Marjorie Wonham, University of Washington-Seattle Campus
How can poetry engage and inspire you and your geoscience students? Find out in this interactive workshop co-designed by a scientist/educator and an artist/poet. We believe that arts and sciences are mutually ...

Adaptation Hunt Lesson Plan for 1st Graders in South Carolina
Julianna Willoughby, University of South Carolina-Columbia; Katherine Ryker, University of South Carolina-Columbia; Mary Beth Estes, Camp Discovery at His Acres
This is a three part science lesson plan for 1st graders in South Carolina focused on adaptations.The lessons align with state standards, is rooted in nature-based learning, and teach the students that living ...

Discussion topics for online and face-to-face introductory geology courses
Tanya Blacic, Umpqua Community College
This is a set of 10 discussion assignments for an online (asynchronous) introductory general geology course and some additional discussion activities for a face-to-face course on natural disasters. For the online ...