Earth Science Teaching Ideas
Types of Trash
This was a fantastic project for students to better understand the need for recycling. The activity titled Trash a Pizza! has students create a pie chart showing the percentages of different types of materials Americans throw away each day. The project is a real eye opener.
Planets
Students worked in groups of 5 to create a chart detailing facts about the planets. Each group presented interesting facts to the class as a culmination to this activity.
Plate Tectonics
You can find variations of this activity all over the web. Students learn about transform, divergent, and convergent boundaries by moving graham crackers, Fruit Rollups, and icing together and apart to illustrate different movements of the earth. This is a great way to teach how different landforms are created as well.
What Makes the Four Seasons
Using a lamp without a shade to represent the sun and a globe removed from its holder, students illustrated the movements of Earth during the four seasons.
During winter in the Northern Hemisphere the axis at the North Pole points away from the sun.
During summer in the Northern Hemisphere the axis at the North Pole points towards from the sun.
Types of Wind
Cutting page protectors apart to make sheets of plastic is a great way for illustrate different movements of the wind. Have students create a simple landscape using construction paper. Staple one piece of plastic to the right side of the landscape and another to the left side. Students draw arrows directly on the plastic page protectors illustrating wind movements. The plastic pages can be lift so that one page of plastic lays over a landscape at a time. This works especially well for valley/mountain breezes and land/sea breezes. |
Free Science Resources
© Gay Miller
Book Units Teacher
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