Fault Models for Teaching About Plate Tectonics
Modified from an activity by Larry Braile (Purdue University) by TOTLE (Teachers on the Leading Edge) Project and further improved by ShakeAlert.
This short interactive activity has learners to manipulate fault blocks to better understand different types of earthquake-generating faults in different tectonic settings--extensional, convergent, and strike-slip. Fault models aid in visualizing and understanding faulting and plate motions because the instructor and their students can manipulate a three-dimensional model for a true hands-on experience.

Evolution of Extinct Animals
Phil Novack-Gottshall, Benedictine University
A classroom/lab activity using the Paleobiology Database to produce and interpret diversity curves for various groups of important and popular extinct animals, such as trilobites, ammonites, and dinosaurs. Activity ...

Unit 5: The Sixth Extinction
Camille Holmgren, SUNY Buffalo State University
In this unit, students will prepare by reading a couple of articles describing the causes and rates of mass extinctions, including the current "Sixth Extinction," and why conservation is important to ...

Unit 1: Introduction to the Geologic Timeline & Mass Extinctions
Rebecca Teed, Wright State University-Main Campus
In this unit, students will identify mass extinctions as paleontologists have done and recognize and understand the "pull of the recent," that is, the human tendency to know more about events closer to ...

Unit 2: Causes of Mass Extinction
Rebecca Teed, Wright State University-Main Campus
During Unit 2, students will learn about the causes of two past mass extinctions and discuss the controversies surrounding these causes and the evidence upon which the theories in the debates are based. Before ...

Unit 4: Impacts of Environmental Change on Organisms: Horses
Camille Holmgren, SUNY Buffalo State University
In this unit, students will gain a deep-time perspective on how life evolves on a dynamic planet. They will use the Equidae (horse family) as a case study to examine the relationship among climate, biomes, and ...

Unit 2: Water Footprints
Robert Turner, University of Washington-Bothell Campus
Unit 2 opens a window into water accounting and reveals intensive water use that few people think about. How much water goes into common commodities? Have you considered how much water it takes to support our ...

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.

Dino Doom
Sina Kirk, Arizona State University at the Tempe Campus
This is an online learning experience that transports learners around the world to different locations related to the Cretaceous–Paleogene (K–Pg) extinction event. Students will collect and analyze evidence to ...

Lesson 2: My Water Footprint (High 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 ...