This week I was able to implement a 6th grade standards lessons to a group of 8th graders. I was pleasantly surprised by their ability to recall detailed information about plate tectonics acquired over two years ago. I have to admit, that it is one of the worries I have as an educator... to find out that students have forgotten everything I taught them. Kudos to my student's 6th grade Earth Science teachers for helping them remember concepts taught a couple years ago.
I had my students create flip books to illustrate the movement of Earth's plates starting from Pangaea 225 million years ago to their current positions. The students were engaged the entire time and genuinely enjoyed researching about how the plates collide and diverge. Students were able to share their findings with each other and show how the boundaries continue to change over time. Below is a picture of one of the flip books created by the students.
The students also had the opportunity to become the "experts" for a particular plate boundary. The two boundaries chosen were the North American/Eurasian Plate and the Indian/Eurasian Plate. The students were most interested by these boundaries because of the natural formations found at each location. The NA plate is diverging from the Eurasian plate to form the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, but the area that most students found interesting is the boundary in Iceland where many active volcanoes are found. The Indian plate caught the students' eyes from the flip book activity. They noticed the movement from the Antarctic all the way north into the Eurasian plate. They realized that the collision of these plates formed the Himalayas, the highest points found on Earth. They were intrigued by the number of earthquakes reported in that area and where able to connect it to the movement of the plates.
The highlight of the lesson had to be the predictions of what Earth would look like in the future. One student calculated that if the Indian plate continues to move at a pace of 1.5cm/yr. and the Himalayas increased in height 5 mm/yr., then Mt. Everest would be over 13,000 meters tall in the one million years! The students also shared a photo they found that depicted the Earth in 50 and 250 million years in the future.
Using models seemed to make learning more enjoyable and easy for the students. They were fully engaged in the lesson and kept finding different pictures to include in their flip book. Using models appeals to a wide variety of learners and helps the EL and RSP students as well. They can serve as tangible and visual examples for the content being discussed that lectures can not provide. The hands-on aspect of the activity also brings about another dimension to the lesson. Students are creating products that show them what has happened in the past, and the fact that they are able to see and touch these products gives them much more buy-in to the lesson. Students who feel they have been an active part of an activity are more likely to remember and recall the information presented in class.
