Sketching 3D Ripples and Dunes part of Spatial Thinking Workbook:Teaching Activities
Students watch a video of the instructor sketching 3D ripples, then practice sketching 3D bedforms, both as seen by the viewer and as annotated 3D block diagrams.

Deciphering Mineral Structure Diagrams part of Spatial Thinking Workbook:Teaching Activities
Students compare mineral structures shown in ball-and-stick, space filling, and polyhedral diagrams.

Understanding Crystal Symmetry via Gestures part of Spatial Thinking Workbook:Teaching Activities
Students use a small mirror to explore the meaning of mirror symmetry, and then use their hands to gesture mirror planes for a group of familiar objects. They also explore the rotational symmetry of a group of familiar objects, and then use their hands to gesture the rotational axes and rotation. Finally, they use gestures to show mirror and rotational symmetry of wooden crystal models.

Instructional Strategies that Support Spatial Thinking part of Spatial Thinking Workbook
Research in cognitive science has identified a number of instructional strategies or "tools" that can be used to help students develop their spatial thinking skills. These tools include gesture, ...

Folds and Cleavage part of Spatial Thinking Workbook:Teaching Activities
Students explore the geometric relationship between bedding/cleavage intersections and fold axes for axial planar, fanning, and transecting cleavage.

Restraining Bends and Releasing Bends part of Spatial Thinking Workbook:Teaching Activities
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.

Primary Structures and Rotation part of Spatial Thinking Workbook:Teaching Activities
Students gesture the orientations of cross-bedded sandstones, and in particular the relationship between a single cross bed and the bed sets. They do this for photos of undeformed and deformed cross-bedding.

Contractional Strain part of Spatial Thinking Workbook:Teaching Activities
Students use gesture to describe the bulk deformation and local deformation apparent in images of a contractional analog experiment. Students then calculate bulk shortening and bulk thickening for the experiment and describe the structures accommodating that strain.

Linear and Planar Features part of Spatial Thinking Workbook:Teaching Activities
Students gesture the orientations of linear and planar features. In the first part of the exercise, students can only see one surface of a wooden block, and are asked to speculate about how planar features penetrate through the interior. Later, they uncover the other faces of the block and gesture the actual orientations.

About this Project part of Spatial Thinking Workbook
Goals The Spatial Thinking Workbook project is focused on improving spatial skills in upper-division undergraduate geoscience courses. Specifically, our goal is to improve students' penetrative thinking ...