Gestures for Silicate Structures
Barb Dutrow (Louisiana State University), Kinnari Atit (Temple University) and Carol Ormand (SERC at Carleton College)
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.
- First Publication: May 12, 2015
- Reviewed: August 4, 2022 -- Reviewed by the On the Cutting Edge Activity Review Process
Summary
Gesture for silica tetrahedron
Provenance: Carol Ormand Ph.D., Carleton College
Reuse: This item is offered under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ You may reuse this item for non-commercial purposes as long as you provide attribution and offer any derivative works under a similar license.
In this exercise, students use gestures to show the structures of single and double chain silicate minerals, paying attention to where silica tetrahedra share oxygen ions and the relative positions of the tetrahedra.
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Learning Goals
After successfully completing this exercise, students will be able to
- Use a gesture to illustrate the structure of a silica tetrahedron.
- Use gestures to show how silica tetrahedra share oxygen ions in chain silicates.
Context for Use
This exercise is designed for use when students are beginning to learn about the classes of silicate mineral structures.
Description and Teaching Materials
Students use gestures to show the structures of island silicates, dislocates, single and double chain silicate minerals.
Silicate structures gesture exercise (Microsoft Word 1MB May12 15)
Assessment
The instructor walks around the room and verbally quizzes students as they are doing the exercise to assess their understanding.
References and Resources
Goldin-Meadow, Susan (2011). Learning Through Gesture. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science, v. 2, n. 6, pp. 595–607.
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.