Tectonics: Teaching Ideas
Visual Learning
When you are teaching tectonics diagrams are likely to become your new best friend. Labelling models and diagrams are a highly effective way to explain such large scale processes, and they help students to visualise them. These are particularly helpful for learning about the structure of the Earth, types of plate boundary, types of volcano and the formation of tsunamis. The difficulty with diagrams is that students can sometimes find it hard to understand the changes as they occur in sequence. To combat this we can use videos and that demonstrate how the land moves and creates landforms as a step by step process. If you cannot access videos we could also use cut and stick exercises to rearrange statements into the correct order. |
To learn about the locations of tectonic plates and their names a simple way for students to remember these is to fill out a world map and draw them on. The map could also be labelled with major earthquakes and volcanoes so that students have an easy visual reference for all of these things in one place. The significance of the patterns between the sites of earthquakes, volcanoes and plate boundaries can be easily pointed out this way.
Written work
As students learn about the effects of volcanoes, earthquakes and tsunamis they could be given the choice of a creative writing task as oppose to simply listing the effects, or both. We could ask the students to imagine they were experiencing a natural disaster and to write a diary or an account of what happened, what they could see, what they did, and how they felt during and after the event. They should be told to include key terms in their writing and try to be realistic rather than thinking about disasters in stories and films.
As students learn about the effects of volcanoes, earthquakes and tsunamis they could be given the choice of a creative writing task as oppose to simply listing the effects, or both. We could ask the students to imagine they were experiencing a natural disaster and to write a diary or an account of what happened, what they could see, what they did, and how they felt during and after the event. They should be told to include key terms in their writing and try to be realistic rather than thinking about disasters in stories and films.
Demonstrations / Experiments
If you had the time and the resources you could build a paper mache model of a volcano with landscape features, a small town etc. You could then use water or Pepsi and mints to simulate a controlled eruption. Have the students use observation skills to see what happens during and after the eruption. You could record the experiment to refer to later or for revision on the school equivalent of the VLE.
A demonstration or experiment for simulating earthquakes would be much simpler. If you provide students with two kinds of material, one weak and one strong and ask them to build two houses, perhaps include small figures e.g. Lego people, you can then gently shake the table and see that the poorly build house falls down. This would be helpful for demonstrating how the same strength earthquake can cause more damage in some places than others depending upon the quality of buildings. You could also try to demonstrate that earthquakes on soft ground have different impacts to earthquake on harder ground by changing the material you build the houses on.
If you had the time and the resources you could build a paper mache model of a volcano with landscape features, a small town etc. You could then use water or Pepsi and mints to simulate a controlled eruption. Have the students use observation skills to see what happens during and after the eruption. You could record the experiment to refer to later or for revision on the school equivalent of the VLE.
A demonstration or experiment for simulating earthquakes would be much simpler. If you provide students with two kinds of material, one weak and one strong and ask them to build two houses, perhaps include small figures e.g. Lego people, you can then gently shake the table and see that the poorly build house falls down. This would be helpful for demonstrating how the same strength earthquake can cause more damage in some places than others depending upon the quality of buildings. You could also try to demonstrate that earthquakes on soft ground have different impacts to earthquake on harder ground by changing the material you build the houses on.
Group Work
Multiple case studies are needed for tectonics to give Earth processes a context. This is a good opportunity for us to incorporate ICT into Geography for research and presentation purposes. Students could be given the choice of working in groups or on their own to look up and present the causes, effects and prevention / protection strategies for earthquakes and volcanoes. By ensuring research includes at least two case studies from different countries (one LEDC, one MEDC) students can compare and contrast natural disasters when they present their work. Work could be printed on the computer and then rearranged onto an A3 page or simply used for research and handwritten depending upon resources and student preferences. As students present work other classmates can be given a worksheet / table to fill out details from other case studies to broaden their knowledge, as well as improve their communication and listening skills.
Please click on the 'Next' button to go to the fifth 'Tectonics' page.
Multiple case studies are needed for tectonics to give Earth processes a context. This is a good opportunity for us to incorporate ICT into Geography for research and presentation purposes. Students could be given the choice of working in groups or on their own to look up and present the causes, effects and prevention / protection strategies for earthquakes and volcanoes. By ensuring research includes at least two case studies from different countries (one LEDC, one MEDC) students can compare and contrast natural disasters when they present their work. Work could be printed on the computer and then rearranged onto an A3 page or simply used for research and handwritten depending upon resources and student preferences. As students present work other classmates can be given a worksheet / table to fill out details from other case studies to broaden their knowledge, as well as improve their communication and listening skills.
Please click on the 'Next' button to go to the fifth 'Tectonics' page.