They did a great job explaining all of the vocabulary words to the students and even modeled some of them. For example, when they were talking about the different types of boundaries (divergent, convergent, and transform), two teachers walked past each other to show what the plates were doing to each other. One thing they did that I thought was a little different was that they had students chorally repeat definitions on review slides, as opposed to asking questions to check for understanding. I've never seen it done like that, but it might have worked for these students. Then they did some creative activities; the one that I thought was really cool was where they folded up a piece of paper and put the continents on top of it using play-doh, then squished and pulled apart the paper to show the continents drifting apart and coming back together. I thought that was an amazing activity that really helped the students because I even heard some realize what was happening and connect it to the lesson!
The inquiry lesson was set up in stations and each station had a cool activity to go along with it. The students went around to the different stations, but they ran out of time, so the students each missed out on one station! The one that I was closest to was where they had a jar of sand that they had the students stick an index card in and shake it to show how the layers of the earth get jumbled up during an earthquake. I found that activity to be creative and a great way to show the students that concept; they all seemed to have a lot of fun doing it. In the beginning they had something up on the board, which had emojis that bounced around when the students got loud. The louder they were, the higher the balls bounced. I've never seen that tool before, so I thought it was awesome, but a group of students were getting distracted by it, so the teachers had to turn it off. I think it'd be a great tool to use on a daily basis, but since it was their first time seeing it, they got a little rowdy.
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