Plate Tectonics has grown to be one of my favorite Earth Science units to teach. This is the first ‘nitty gritty’ unit that I teach during the school year. I find that once students understand the dynamics of this incredible phenomenon, they can think BIG about the cycling of Earth’s materials when we discuss rocks and geologic time.
In this post, I want to share with you some of my favorite resources and activities for teaching about Plate Tectonics and the Earth’s Interior. These resources and activities have been curated over the years and I hope you will find this list helpful!
I have also included a FREE DOWNLOAD at the bottom of this post, so don’t miss it!
Ancient Earth Globe
Even after studying Alfred Wegener and the concept of Pangaea, a handful of my students still don’t seem to understand that Pangaea was real. I can’t tell you how many times I have gotten the question, “Wait, was Pangaea actually real?”. This Ancient Earth Globe interactive is a really cool way for students to explore how the Earth looked throughout its history. They can choose different time periods and both see what the landmasses of Earth looked like and read short descriptions of the flora and fauna that existed during that period.
Building Pangaea Gizmo
If you’ve done paper Pangaea puzzle activities in your class before, this one is for you! Save yourself the headache of having your students cut out all of the continents and paste them down (umm, paper scraps everywhere and worse cutting jobs than my two year old?!) and of running around your classroom answering whether ‘this goes here?’ for the bajillionth time! Activities like that always felt like a bit of a waste of a class period to me.
This virtual ExploreLearning Gizmo Pangaea puzzle is the best one. It’s simple and easy to manipulate. It provides enough information about rock, fossil, and glacial evidence to help students to ‘get it’ without becoming caught-up in whether the fit is perfect or not. There are high-level questions provided in the teacher notes that you can ask your students to check for understanding (I put these into a Google Form!). It’s also the perfect Pangaea tool for remote or hybrid learning.
The only problem with this awesome interactive is that it requires a school subscription if your students need to use it for more than 5 minutes! There is a 30-day free trial for teachers who have never used this website before. So you could perhaps take advantage of that (but beware of the timing of when you start your trial and when you need your students to use the interactive!) and discuss a possible subscription with your administration afterwards (as I mention in this post, this website has hands-down the best simulations for teaching science, IMO!)
Alfred Wegener and Pangaea Readers’ Theatre Play
This Readers’ Theatre play called Alfred Wegener and Pangaea freebie from my TeachersPayTeachers store is a simple and fun way to get your kinestethic and thespian students involved in the learning! The dialogue between Alfred Wegener and the continents of the world is engaging and intentional. This resource is laid out in booklet-style. My 6th graders LOVE doing this play and I think it solidifies their understanding of Pangaea.
I borrow a ‘Russian/German’-looking hat from a teacher in our school for ‘Alfred Wegener’ to wear. I have each ‘continent’ wear a sign attached to their shirt. I printed a class set of the script and then one set for the actors, on which I wrote the part and highlighted the lines/actions. This made it cake for the kids to know when it was their turn to speak or move! I use the same scripts every year for this activity.
If the Layers of the Earth Could Talk and Sing Activity
When I started teaching Earth Science, I tried to think of a way to ‘personify’ each layer of Earth to help my students to remember each layer’s characteristics. This fun activity was born from that brainstorming and it’s turned into a hit lesson! Using an interactive diagram that I created, students learn what each of Earth’s mechanical layers would say if they could talk and what they would sing if they could sing! I teach this lesson as a whole-class group because the kids really get into it with dance moves, air microphones, and conga-lines!
For example, the Lithosphere would shout “Moving Plates! Moving Plates!” and it would sing Carol King’s “I Feel the Earth Move Under My Feet.” We discuss how the Lithosphere is made up of Earth’s tectonic plates — the motion of which is the cause of earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and the Earth’s changing surface. As another example, the Outer Core would yell “Molten Metal! Molten Metal!” and it would sing Dead or Alive’s “You Spin Me Round”. We discuss how the Outer Core is the only true liquid layer of the Earth and that its motion generates the Earth’s magnetic field.
Blind Man Uses Bat-Like Vision Video and Discussion
Once we discuss the characteristics of Earth’s layers, students inevitably begin asking — “how do we know all of this if we can’t dig down deep enough to study these layers?”. This is perfect timing for this interesting discussion. I show my students this video clip of this blind man who uses waves to ‘see’ the world around him, just like how a bat uses echo-location to see. This man is amazing — he says he’s traveled to 40+ countries, he rides a bike, and he seems extremely independent for being 100% blind. The students are always amazed by this.
This video generates the discussion about how we ‘see’ inside the Earth using a similar technique — waves! I can then introduce the concept of P and S-waves and have students view diagrams to deduce that seismic waves help us study the Earth’s interior without actually being able to ‘see’ it.
Density Labs
I love teaching my 8th grade students about density in our Physical Science curriculum. But being that density is such a ubiquitous concept that all science students should understand, I find that the Plate Tectonics unit is the perfect place to do a deep-dive into the concept of density in my 6th grade Earth Science curriculum. And man, do we do a deep-dive!
I like to begin this little mini-unit with this Flinking Inquiry. ‘Flinking’ is a made-up word that means ‘neither floating nor sinking’ and it really sticks with students! I can’t tell you how many more times you’ll hear this word throughout the school year once you introduce it! For this activity, I simply provide a large beaker, a 1-inch styrofoam ball, and a range of objects like buttons, beads, paperclips, modeling clay, and nails. In pairs or groups of 3, students have to alter their styrofoam ball to make it ‘flink’ in the column of water in the beaker.
This activity is a fun and exciting introduction to density. Grab the FREEBIE of this lesson, which includes teacher notes and a student sheet, by clicking on this link!
After the Flinking Lab, the second density activity that I do with my students is a density column lab that correlates with the layers of the Earth. The materials for this lab include the pantry liquids of vegetable oil, dish soap, corn syrup, and plain old water, and the simple objects of a paperclip, a piece of pasta, a piece of crayon, and a piece of a wooden splint. Students first practice measuring and calculating the density of each liquid. They predict how the liquids will layer when they are poured into the same container. Then, they drop in the solid objects to see where they ‘land’.
This density column is simple yet effective for helping students to understand why Earth’s interior is layered.
Modeling Convection Currents Lesson
As part of their studies on Plate Tectonics, this Modeling Convection Currents activity will help your students understand the dynamics of convection currents in the Earth’s mantle. Through a series of demonstrations, your students will develop an understanding of how these currents affect the surface of the Earth.
This lesson also focuses on modeling phenomena. If you’ve never done modeling in your science class before, this is a great lesson to start with! The first part of the lesson has students analyze strong versus weak models and develop a list of qualities that make a science model stronger. They will use their list to draw models throughout the rest of the lesson. I like to make a poster board of the qualities we discuss as a class to keep on the wall.
This lesson includes four demonstrations included as video links in case you don’t have the necessary materials. The concepts from the demonstrations build on one another. Students consider and explore how temperature affects density, how currents form in a heated fluid, and how this relates to the Earth’s mantle and the Earth’s surface.
For each demonstration, students predict what will happen, observe what happens, model their observations, and circle back to explain the phenomenon. I have found that students are very engaged in this process. The assessment at the end of the lesson is a Claim-Evidence-Reasoning write-up helps you to see if the students are able to apply the concepts to the convection that happens in the Earth’s mantle.
You can check out this lesson by clicking on the image below!
Mountain Maker, Earth Shaker Plate Tectonics Interactive
This PBS Mountain Maker Earth Shaker interactive is a simple but direct way to show the three types of plate boundaries, convergent, divergent, and transform. Students click on the three different areas of the graphic to see how the tectonic plates move relative to one another and the effects of these motions.
Learner.org Plates and Boundaries Interactive and Challenge
To help students to see where on the Earth the different types of plate boundaries are located, they can explore the Learner.org Plates and Boundaries interactive. Then, students can practice in the Challenge part of the interactive (which can also be reached using the red text link at the bottom of the Plates and Boundaries screen). The game element in this part motivates students to learn the names of Earth’s major tectonic plates.
Google Earth Seafloor Age Layer
Okay this one is probably my favorite! The Google Earth Seafloor Age Layer is hands-down the best way to help your students to understand mid-ocean ridges and seafloor spreading, the ‘missing piece’ of Alfred Wegener’s theory and the crux of Plate Tectonics. The vibrant colors on this layer make it SO clear how the age of the seafloor is related to its distance from the mid-ocean ridges. Students can explore each of the mid-ocean ridges to find the same phenomenon happening at each one.
American Museum of Natural History Plates on the Move Interactive
I like to end this unit with this American Museum of Natural History Plates on the Move Interactive. This interactive ‘puts it all together’ because it shows students all of the Earth’s major plate boundaries on one map, highlights convergent, divergent, and transform boundaries, hot spots, subduction zones, mid-ocean ridges, and more!
I created a Google Form for my students to complete while they work through this interactive that I use as a mini assessment tool. Students click on the different plate boundaries to read about the plate interaction that happens there. They are prompted if their answers to questions in the interactive are incorrect so they know if they are understanding the dynamics of that plate boundary or not. This is a great cumulative tool to use at the end of your Plate Tectonics unit!
Plate Tectonics Pixel Art Vocabulary Review
Try this engaging pixel art digital review activity at the end of your Plate Tectonics unit. This activity reviews characteristics of the layers of the Earth, the theory of continental drift, the types of plate boundaries (convergent, divergent, transform), and other related terms such as convection current, magma, fault line, and seafloor spreading.
For this activity, students each receive a copy of the Google Sheet. They read brief descriptions of 20 vocabulary words and they type the vocabulary word that matches that description into the answer column. This pixel art activity includes a word bank. If a student’s answer to a question is correct, color will magically appear in the cells in the center of the spreadsheet. If the answer is incorrect, the color will not appear and the student will know that the answer is wrong. This is a self-checking way for students to review the vocabulary related to Plate Tectonics!
Don’t forget that you can grab the FLINKING DENSITY INQUIRY MINI-LAB for free by clicking on this link!
All of these activities (except for the free Alfred Wegener Readers’ Theatre play and the free Flinking Lab above), plus many more are included as full activities for students in my Plate Tectonics and Earth’s Interior Digital Unit! This unit is divided into 10 lessons that break down these concepts and put them all back together NGSS-style! Check it out by clicking on the image below!
You may also be interested in my Plate Tectonics Bundle, which includes both the full unit above, plus three sets of Cornell Doodle Notes (Earth’s Interior, Continental Drift and Seafloor Spreading, and Plate Tectonics), and some additional activities like this Plate Tectonics Pixel Art Vocab Review! Click on the button below for more information!
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