Session #1: What's Current?

Jump to: Exploring Heat and Density | Convection Currents | Reviewing the Big Ideas | Teaching Tips |Other Resources

Stressing the Nature of Science

Understanding how science works is important for our students. Textbooks seldom treat science as a process, one that is a work in progress and self-correcting. By helping students to understand the process of science, we can help them to appreciate what science is all about and how it differs from non-science.

Link to this short activity that quickly engages students in the process of science. They develop multiple hypotheses to explain a set of observations and figure out how to test these hypotheses.

Exploring Heat and Density

Understanding heat and density will help us to understand convection currents. During this section, participants discussed the big ideas about heat and density and explored activities suitable for demonstrating specific concepts about each topic.

A. The Big Ideas about Heat

B. The Big Ideas about Density

C. Activities to demonstrate concepts about heat and density

Convection Currents

Course participants apply what they have learned about heat and density in a series of hands-on explorations of currents.

A. Activity: Predicting Currents

B. Convection Currents and the Earth's system

C. Activity: Mapping the Buoys

D. What about salt?

Reviewing the Big Ideas

The Earth is a Dynamic Structure

Teaching Tips

Avoiding the "Foot-shootings"

Other Resources

The Everyday Science Sourcebook by Lawrence F. Lowery. Dale Seymour Publications.

Current Events - A GEMS Guide. Lawrence Hall of Science.

Float or Sink - A GEMS Guide. Lawrence Hall of Science.

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