Scavenger Hunt in Downtown Tacoma

Every Tuesday afternoon the middle school students go on a 50-minute walking tour of downtown Tacoma.  Students have learned about local architecture, offerings at the Karpeles manuscript museum, and the new extension to Sound Transit Link. A few weeks ago they went on a scavenger hunt for a myriad of images that could found within a 4 block radius of the school. The images were picked for aesthetics as well as the need for students to be attentive and have a keen idea of their surroundings while walking around the city.  As a group, students found almost all the images; however, Humpty Dumpty and the hand prints remained elusive.  If you find yourself downtown and wish to redo the scavenger hunt, I invite you to try this fun activity. The first photo is one of the groups of students part way through their search.  The second photo is the items to find. Good luck and Happy Holidays!

Plate Tectonics – Inquiry Based Learning

 How were the Hawaiian Islands formed?

This was the phenomenon that middle school scientists investigated with multiple hands-on science labs these last few weeks. Hawaii is one of the world's newest geological structures, and the science behind its formation and plate tectonics is a recent development, as recently as the 1930s. 

Looking at this map and some photos of the islands, some students noticed the line-like formation of the islands and the ascending size of each island compared to the islands to the east and south of it. They also notice the color of rocks and amount of vegetation. What do you notice?

Students also looked into eruption and earthquake data, finding volcanism on Hawaii an anomaly in the middle of the Pacific Plate. We used a digital resource for this.

The students then made a claim based on evidence and reasoning. They advanced their claim with further experiments: one on the movement of plates caused by convection currents and another experiment on how heat forces magma to the surface. These experiments modeled plate tectonics and how Hawaii may have formed.

By the end, students were able to state their claims about how the Hawaiian Islands were formed and the evidence they used to support it. They could predict the date of each island's formation and even the formation of volcanoes on the big island. 

This is an inquiry-based model, where students are presented a strange phenomenon, and then through questions and experiments, they gain understanding. This is also how real geologists came to understand plate tectonics and the formation of Hawaii. We hope by understanding this part of geology, students will also understand the formation of Washington geology as well.