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Does anyone have an idea for this week to do an activity (or just a discussion framework) regarding the recent events in Japan? I just took a temp position teaching Integrated Physical Science until the end of the year. We are going to cover Earth Science until the end of the year. Since I am more of a Life Science teacher, I am scrambling to find resources and ideas to keep students engaged. This class has mostly 9th and 10th grades but many are not achieving at grade level. Also, there are several Junior and Senior students who are only here to graduate, having failed other science classes. So I am using more middle school resources in some cases. My question at the moment is about finding any ideas to talk about the earthquake and tsunami in Japan tomorrow since we will cover Earthquakes within a week or 2. It is so much in the news right now, that I thought I'd take a day or 2 now to talk generally about the impact this has had and what we can learn from it.

Laura- Go to the website: http://www.iris.edu/hq/ You will love this site. Everything you need to teach with using current events and more.

I wish we could combine this with the Tsunami thread. Since I can not do that I am gong to reattach my annotated hyperlinked websites here

Attachments

Tsunami.docx (0.02 Mb)

Thanks for the IRIS website advice...has a lot of great links for earthquakes and tsunamis. Only problem, my school does not allow You Tube:(

On March 31 NOVA aired their program Jpan's Killer Quake. You can not watch the program on line at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/earth/japan-killer-quake.html

Virtual Earthquake is an interactive Web-based activity designed to introduce you to the concepts of how an earthquake EPICENTER is located and how the RICHTER MAGNITUDE of an earthquake is determined. A new version was recently added. http://www.sciencecourseware.com/VirtualEarthquake/

@Laura and Sue I noted this endorsement of iris on the earth science listserve "I recommend the "Earthquake Machine" lessons as a great set of inquiries into the behavior of faults. The materials are simple, but the results are surprisingly sophisticated."

Hi Laura,

You might want to check out additional discussions that deal with the recent events in Japan. Here is the link to the one in the physical science forum. The other thread is in the earth science forum.

Laura,

As I was reading the updates to another Earth Science thread I found some more information that might be helpful. Scroll down to the bottom of the page. Dorian Janney posted some great resources on Thursday, March 10, 2011.