Restraining Bends and Releasing Bends

Laurel Goodwin, UW-Madison, and Carol Ormand, SERC at Carleton College

This activity is part of the On the Cutting Edge Peer Reviewed Teaching Activities collection.

This activity was selected for the On the Cutting Edge Reviewed Teaching Collection

This activity has received positive reviews in a peer review process involving five review categories. The five categories included in the process are

Scientific Accuracy
Alignment of Learning Goals, Activities, and Assessments
Pedagogic Effectiveness
Robustness (usability and dependability of all components)
Completeness of the ActivitySheet web page

For more information about the peer review process itself, please see https://serc.carleton.edu/teachearth/activity_review.html.

This page first made public: Apr 10, 2014

Summary

In this exercise, students use gestures to re-create the motion of fault blocks adjacent to restraining bends and releasing bends. They then answer a few questions about a map view of the San Andreas Fault and two of its bends.

Folds/Faults/Ductile Shear Zones | College Lower (13-14), College Upper (15-16)

Expand for more detail and links to related resources

Used this activity? Share your experiences and modifications

Learning Goals

After completing this exercise, students will be able to determine whether a curve on a fault surface forms a restraining bend or a releasing bend.

Context for Use

This exercise can be used either to have students discover or to review the concepts of restraining bends and releasing bends. It can be completed as a short in-class exercise or as homework.

Description and Teaching Materials

Restraining bends and releasing bends (Microsoft Word 2007 (.docx) 1.4MB May19 15)

Assessment

When we use this is an in-class exercise, we walk around the room, watching and talking with the students as they work through the exercise. It's a quick and easy way to assess student comprehension.

References and Resources

Goldin-Meadow, Susan (2011). Learning Through Gesture. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science, v. 2, n. 6, pp. 595–607.

Goldin-Meadow, Susan, Howard Nusbaum, Spencer D. Kelly, and Susan Wagner (2001). Explaining Math: Gesturing Lightens the Load. Psychological Science, v. 12, n. 6, pp. 516-522.

Using Gesture to Support Spatial Thinking highlights the value of gesture in communicating spatial information. It consists of two short exercises, and can be used in preparation for any other exercise in which students will be asked to use gesture to communicate spatial information.

See more Teaching Activities »