Plate Tectonics with Playdoh

I have a giant bin of playdoh that was shared with me from a fellow colleague (gotta love the sharing of materials!). When my ninth graders were studying plate tectonics, I knew I wanted to put the playdoh to use with model making.  If you don’t have playdoh (or clay) to use, you can create your own (perhaps using this recipe), purchase some from the local dollar store, or buy a play-doh modeling compound classpack (with 6 sets of 8 colors) or a variety pack of 36 colors.

There are already a ton of resources for playdoh or clay to be used with plate tectonic explorations.  I found these after I created my own activity. It was definitely one of those “wish I knew about this resource when I began teaching the unit instead of after” moments. Either way, I am happy to share the plate tectonic resources I found:

• Ms. Nucleus Plate Tectonics Teacher Guide (24 Page Document with 4 Plate Tectonics Lessons)
• New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science Earth and Space Science Supplemental Curriculum (Plate Tectonics Document is 52 Pages, has 7 lessons, and is in English and Spanish)
• Center for Ocean Sciences Education Excellence (CoSEE – South) Exploring Plate Tectonics Units (Play-doh Plates Lesson has a downloadable Teacher and Student Version)

For my purposes, I needed a simple culminating review activity.  To begin with, I created the following vocabulary checklist.

I had students work in pairs.  Each pair could create any models to represent the terms on their checklist. Students already had exposure to all of the terms on the checklist, but I allowed them to reference their textbook and notes as needed.

As partners created their models, I walked around (and around and around). Each pair orally describe how their model (or models) represented the terms to me.  If I agreed with their representation, I allowed them to cross those terms off their checklist.  Sometimes students would be able to cross off 5 terms and other times they could only cross off one.  It was a great way for students to get instant feedback.

Here is the Google Doc version so you can download this freebie.  I used a document so you can edit or change the vocabulary as needed.  It fits two to a page and I only gave one checklist to each pair of students. Gotta save that copy quota!

You can also view the document below.  (For some reason the check-boxes don’t show up in the preview, but they show up in the download.)

I had students spend about 20 minutes on this plate tectonics with playdoh activity.  In this time, most students did not finish crossing all the words off their checklist.   That was fine with me because they were engaged in review the entire time, which was the point of the activity.

Happy model making!

P.S If you are looking for ideas for science experiments, check out my book Real Science Experiments: 40 Exciting STEAM Activities for Kids online at Amazon, Barnes&Noble, Indigo (for those of you in Canada), and even Target!