Are you teaching earth science to high school students for the first time? I was in your shoes a few years ago. After a long tenure teaching high school biology, an earth science position opened up at my school. As a lover of all things rock-related, I was excited about
Teaching about Earth’s layers can be SO FUN! There are a lot of ways to make this topic hands-on and weave in some demos and experiments. Below is a list of activities you can choose from! Layers of the Earth Lesson Ideas I always try and begin a unit with
I love teaching weathering and erosion! One of the best ways to learn about weathering and erosion is to SEE it in action. There are a few ways to do this: Large stream tables are expensive, and a pain to store from year to year. You can easily make your
We recently covered one of my favorite units- relative and absolute dating (and fossils of course!) I love asking questions like… “how do we know the earth is 4.5 billion years old?” and “how do we know humans have only been around 100,000 years?” Dating is not a difficult topic
I hear from a lot of teachers that teaching rocks and minerals is booooring (I beg to differ!)I have two blog posts for you- this one with resources to help you teach minerals and a second to help you teach rocks. Side note: I want to point out that there
Geologic time is one of the last topics I cover in my biology class. We discuss it briefly throughout the year when we learn about ecological succession and evolution, but we don’t take a deeper dive until the end of the year. I absolutely LOVE any excuse to get out
I LOVE looking at and collecting fossils. It’s fun to try and picture what the organism looked like and what type of fossil it is. Students love them too! One tip from experience: Students enjoy them A LOT more if they have bigger samples to look at. I know what
You can probably tell based on my blog name…. I like rocks. I don’t claim to be an expert geologist, but I have a deep love for pretty rocks, am fascinated by them and how they form, and have quite a collection. Students often think rocks are boring until you
I absolutely LOVE teaching plate tectonics. What kid doesn’t love learning about earthquakes and volcanoes?! I’ve compiled a list of activities you can choose from to make this one of your students’ favorite units (and probably your favorite too).1. Why do Earth’s plates move in the first place? Use this