Teacher's Room  Lesson Plan  Comment Form  Things To Do  Search  People  Sponsors

"Teaching people about the world in which we live."

Volcano Lesson plan   -  This lesson plan will be complete Oct. 15, 1998
This lesson is also available in a one day  plan.
by Lara Steele

This page contains, ready to go, all the background information you need to teach the Volcano Lesson, including overheads, handouts, quizzes, and evaluation materials. You will need a computer, printer, pens, pencils, transparencies, and other 'normal' classroom supplies. Please feel free to use the provided materials, share them, reproduce them, but make sure TerraX.org receives credit.

Objectives

• The student will be able to state the main idea of a story.
• The student will be able to define and describe the properties of two types of volcanoes, shield and cone.
• The student will be able to explain why volcanoes are important and how they affect our environment.
• The student will be able to describe the biological and geological effects of the 1980 Mt. St. Helens' eruption.
• The student will be able to construct a drawing of a volcano, labeling and explaining all the major parts.
• The student will be able to develop questions for a local expert about the Mt. St. Helens' eruption.
• The student will be able to revise a list of what they know about volcanoes.
• The student will be able to judge if an island with an active volcano would be safe to visit.

Materials

• Activity sheet: "Will That Volcano Spoil Our Party?"  (Reprinted with permission of Bill Byles.) (one per student)
• Optional Grading Rubric for "Will That Volcano Spoil Our Party?"
• Worksheet (one per student)
• Worksheet Answer Key
• Mount St. Helens Information sheet (one per student)
• Plate tectonics handout (No Labels)(one per student) OR
• Plate tectonics handout (With Labels) (one per student)
• Copy of talk
• Grading rubric for questions exercise.
• Color Plate tectonics overhead (or check this one out for viewing only) or black and white (If you use the black and white version you will need to color it in ahead of time.)
• Story
• Chalk board and chalk (overhead projector and markers may be used for this instead)
• Computer with internet access (if you don't have computer access in your classroom, try our one day lesson plan instead)
• Crayons, colored pencils or markers

Outline

Day one:

1. First familiarize yourself with the information provided on our pages about volcanoes.
2. For an introduction tell the students you are going to read them a story.
3. Ask the questions at the bottom of the story.  Allow about five minutes, at most for feed back.
4. Tell the students you want them to brainstorm things that they know about volcanoes.   As they say things put them up on the board.  Expect answers like: hot, magma, lava, explosions, islands, etc.
5. Have one student write down the list and then give it to you to keep for later.
6. Give an overview of cone and shield volcanoes.
7. Explain that they are going to familiarize themselves with plate tectonics and how volcanoes are made.
8. Hand out the black and white plate tectonics handout. Pass around the crayons, colored pencils or markers.
9. Put up the transparency of the plate tectonics handout and go over the different parts with the students.
10. Have them color and label all the different parts of the handout.  You may either do this all together as a class or let them have 10 to 15 minutes to work on it then go over it as a class.  It is important that they understand how the process works.
11. Collect their handouts for grading.
12. Explain that Mount St. Helens is a volcano and explain a little bit about its location, size, and last eruption. Do not give too much information and ask the students to hold their questions till after the lesson.
13. Explain that they are going to read about the explosion and recovery of Mount St. Helens then answer some questions on what they have read.
14. What they don't have time to do in class should be assigned as home work.
15. For home work they are also to develop three questions that they want to find answers to.  These should be questions that are not answered in the reading material provided.

Day two:

1. Collect the worksheet homework from the previous day.  Allow students to keep their questions. To make sure that they have done the work and written the questions I suggest having the students put the questions on their desks, then walking around and putting an initial in your grade book of everyone that did them.
2. Explain that the next class period they will be allowed to research their questions in class.
3. Tell them that they are going to do a group project.
4. Hand out the activity sheets.
5. Give them their directions, explaining the Activity sheet, and then divide them into groups.
6. Give them the rest of the period to work on this project then instruct them that the rest of the project is due in one weeks time.  I suggest making it their responsibility to get together with their groups on their own time.  Encourage them to use the library.
7. At the end of class allow remind them to bring their questions back for the research project tomorrow.  Tell them they will be graded on the type of questions as well as the answers they find.

Day three:

1. Pass out a copy of the interactive talk that was hosted here.  Let the studetns use the material in the talk and library materials as well as the World Wide Web to answer their questions.  They should answer each one with a brief paragraph.  Most of their questions are probably answered in the talk materials.
2. Collect the three paragraphs for grading.

Day four:

Should be done after the students finish their projects.

1. Put the list of brainstormed words back on the board.
2. Discus, briefly the questions the students asked, mentioning four or five of the better ones with their answers.
3. Have the groups make their presentations.
4. Ask the students what words they can add to their list of brainstormed words.

 Teacher's Room  Lesson Plan  Comment Form  Things To Do  Search  People  Sponsors