'Continental drift' to 'Plate tectonics'

'Wegener's 'Continental drift' meets Wilson's 'Plate tectonics'. This is an activity to show how Wegener's continental drift evidence matches up with evidence for plate tectonics. Pupils can sort out which parts of the evidence we now have for plate tectonics, Alfred Wegener knew about in the 1920s.

You can find lots more ideas for teaching this topic on the ELI website in Teaching strategies.

NEW Earth Science activities website

The Earthlearningidea team is pleased to announce the launch of a new, related website - Earth Science Activities and Demonstrations. Mike Tuke's activities and demonstrations provide a thousand and one ideas for teaching Geology: visual aids, demonstrations, short activities, paper exercises and experiments.

Click here for other websites listed on the Earthlearningidea site.

Plate tectonics through the window

Have you tried the ELI, 'Plate tectonics through the window'? What might you see through a window or porthole at an active plate margin? What might you hear? What might you sense? What might you feel?
For your pupils, imagining a plate margin involves bridging between an understanding of plate tectonic activity and its likely effects on people in the region.
This is one of many plate tectonics activities that are free to download from our website.

Gold prospectors

The new Earthlearningidea today is 'Gold prospectors; panning for 'gold' in river sediment'. This activity investigates how prospectors use the property of density to search for gold in river sediments.
Other activities related to this one are listed on the home page of our website.
Did you know you can search for almost any Earth-related topic by searching the activities, topics or categories on our website?

Have you tried plate-riding?

A very popular Earthlearningidea activity is plate riding; it involves role-play plate-surfing and asks: 'How is the plate you live on moving now?'
Pretend you are balancing on a surfboard. Ask the students:
• “What am I doing?” Plate-riding or plate-surfing.
• “How fast am I going?” As fast as our fingernails grow, several centimetres per year.
• “In which direction am I travelling?” Towards the direction in which the plate is moving.
• “What is happening behind me?” New plate material is being formed, probably at an oceanic ridge.
• “What is happening in front of me?” You are probably heading towards a subduction zone,
“How can I tell I’m moving?” This is shown by evidence from: GPS measurements over several years; magnetic ocean floor stripes; the age of ocean floor sediments; and the lines of volcanoes produced at volcanic ‘hot spots’ like Hawaii.
Lots of Earth-related activities are FREE to download from our website.

Rocks from the big screen

Today's new Earthlearningidea involves indoor preparation for outdoor field work, 'Rocks from the big screen'. Use the suggestions in this activity to prepare pupils for an outdoor visit to a rock exposure in your own locality. If projection equipment and a large screen are available, project a photograph of a rock face (as shown above, or use one of your own). Ask pupils to pretend that they are looking at the actual rock face. Place some appropriate rock specimens on the floor below the screen, as though they had fallen from the rock face. The pupils now identify the pieces of rock, draw a scaled diagram (field sketch) of the photo and then work out the geological history.
Further details of this activity are available by downloading the free pdf.
Visit out website's homepage to see other activities related to this ELI.

Modelling processes where two plates move apart

An extremely popular activity to demonstrate processes happening at constructive (divergent) plate margins is 'A "mantle plume" in a beaker'.  This Earthlearningidea investigates what happens when a viscous material (syrup) is heated and rises, with the resultant moving apart of floating objects (broken biscuit) above it. This can be related to a rising plume of hot material beneath a constructive plate margin.
This is one of many plate tectonics activities available to download free from our website.