A Data Rich Exercise for Discovering Plate Boundary Processes

Abstract

“Discovering Plate Boundaries” is a classroom exercise based on four world maps containing earthquake, volcano, topography, and seafloor age data. A novel aspect of the exercise is the “jigsaw” manner in which student groups access the maps and use them to discover, classify, and describe plate boundary types. The exercise takes three 50 minute class periods to complete and involves the students making presentations to one another in small groups and to the whole class. The students are first organized into four groups where they work together to become “specialists” in a particular data type. They are later reorganized into groups containing a specialist in each data type to study the boundaries of a particular tectonic plate. The exercise concludes with student presentations of their group work, followed by a presentation by the teacher and a group discussion.The exercise is useful at a wide variety of levels because it is based only on observation and description. We have used it successfully with middle school, high school, and college major and non-major Earth science classes, as well as with pre-service and in-service K-12 teachers. The students come away from the exercise with knowledge of the key features of each type of plate boundary and a sense of why each looks the way it does. While the materials to conduct the exercise are available on the Internet (http://terra.rice.edu/plateboundary/), the actual exercise is not based on student access to the Web and does not require sophisticated classroom technology equipment.