Offline Classroom Activities — Science 10
Term 1 · Week 2 · CG Quarter 1, competency 2 · Plate boundaries
Three individual and two group activities. No electricity, nothing to buy, no laboratory equipment. All five are written for a room of 45 or more with fixed desks.
Two cautions before any of these.
The first is about people. Activity 4 asks learners to find the hazards near where they live. In this country some of them will have lost a home, a school or a family member to an earthquake, an eruption or a landslide. Say at the start, to the whole class, that anybody may work on a different part of the archipelago without giving a reason — so that nobody has to explain themselves in front of the room to avoid a map of their own province.
The second is about fire. Activity 3 uses a candle. It is the only naked flame in the week and the safety notes in it are not a formality.
Activity 1 — Build the Table (group)
| Time | 35 minutes |
| Group size | 5 — works at 4 to 6 |
| Materials | Paper. Two sheets and one book per group for demonstrating |
| Preparation | Five minutes: draw an empty three-by-four table on the board — boundary, movement, structure, events. |
The point
The class builds the week's table instead of copying it. Nothing goes on the board that a group cannot defend, and a row that the class successfully challenges comes back down.
Roles — everybody has one
| Role | What they do | How many |
|---|---|---|
| Modeller | Demonstrates the group's boundary with the paper and the book, to the group first and then to the class | 1 |
| Structure Writer | Writes what forms there. One line, no more | 1 |
| Events Writer | Writes what happens there. One line, no more | 1 |
| Challenger | Argues against the group's own row before it goes up, and reports what could not be defended | 1 |
| Reporter | Takes the row to the board and answers the class's questions | 1 |
With four, the Challenger and the Reporter combine — and if a group has to drop one role, it must not be the Challenger.
Instructions
- Each group is given one boundary: divergent, transform, or one of the three kinds of convergence. With five groups every case is covered once.
- Model it with the paper and the book until every member of the group can do it.
- Fill your row: movement, structure, events.
- The Challenger argues against every entry. Anything that cannot be defended comes off.
- The Reporter puts the row on the board and takes questions from the class.
- Every learner copies the finished table — all five rows — into their own notes.
The two questions the class should ask every group
a. "Which object moves, and which way?" Every row must answer this before anything else.
b. "Does anything sink? How do you know?" This is the question that separates the three kinds of convergence, and a class that asks it of all five groups will notice on its own that one convergent row answers no — which is the whole difficulty of the week, discovered rather than announced.
Rubric — 12 marks
| Criterion | 3 | 2 | 1 | 0 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The model was made | Every member can demonstrate it with the paper and the book | Most members can | One member can | Nobody demonstrated |
| The row is complete | Movement, structure and events, all three, all correct | Two of the three | One | Boundary name only |
| It was challenged first | The Challenger reports at least one entry that was changed or dropped | Entries were argued | The Challenger read the row back | No challenge |
| Everybody worked | All five roles carried out | Four | Three | One person did it all |
Activity 2 — Three Kinds of Toward (individual)
| Time | 25 minutes |
| Materials | Two sheets of paper and one book with a hard cover, per learner or per pair. Paper and pencil for drawing |
| Preparation | Two minutes: check that every learner has something rigid to use as the book. |
The three models
Model 1 — continent meets continent. Two sheets of paper flat on the desk, edge to edge. Push them together slowly.
Model 2 — ocean meets continent. One sheet flat, the book resting on one end. Push the paper toward the book.
Model 3 — ocean meets ocean. Two sheets, one lying slightly over the edge of the other. Push them together. One goes under.
Instructions
- Do each model. Draw what you saw — a side view, three drawings.
- On each drawing, label: which way each plate moved, whether anything went down, and where the trench would be if there is one.
- For each, write what forms and what happens there.
- Answer: which of the three has no trench, and why?
- Answer: which two have volcanoes, and where does the molten rock come from?
- Write one sentence saying what the paper and the book each stand for, and one thing the model gets wrong.
Why steps 4 and 6 are the activity
Steps 1 to 3 are the drill and most of the class will do them correctly. Step 4 is the competency — it is the only place a learner has to notice that one convergent case behaves in the opposite way from the other two.
Step 6 is the science. Every model is wrong somewhere, and saying where is a skill the guide asks for by name in the performance standard: use models to explain. The honest answers here are that paper is not thick or heavy in the way crust is, the desk is not the asthenosphere, and the push comes from a hand rather than from the plate's own weight.
Differentiation
| One step down | Models 1 and 2 only, steps 1 to 4, with the drawings supplied to label rather than drawn from scratch. |
| One step up | Model 2 again, and mark on the drawing where the earthquakes would be at three different depths. Then say what the pattern of depths tells you about the angle the plate goes down at. |
Assessment
| Seen | What it means |
|---|---|
| Three drawings labelled, step 4 answered with nothing sinks | The competency is met with understanding |
| Three drawings correct, step 4 answered because it is different | The observation without the reason. Ask which plate would have to sink and why it will not |
| A trench drawn on model 1 | The diagnostic. The learner has drawn what a convergent boundary is supposed to look like instead of what their own hands just did |
| Step 6 blank | Ordinary, and worth going back for. Ask one question: is the desk the asthenosphere? |
Activity 3 — The Bowl That Circulates (individual)
| Time | 20 minutes |
| Materials | A shallow metal tin of water — a clean sardine or milk tin. A candle stub. A few grains of rice, or tea leaves, or a pinch of dried herbs |
| Preparation | Ten minutes: set the tin on stones or a tripod with the candle beneath one end only. Fill it about two centimetres deep. |
⚠️ Fire, and it is the only one this week. The teacher lights the candle and the teacher puts it out. No learner reaches across it. The tin gets hot and stays hot for several minutes after the flame is out — say so before, not after. Do not run this in a room without a clear path to the door.
Instructions
- Scatter the grains on the water. Watch them sit still.
- Predict, in writing: what will the grains do when one end is heated?
- The teacher lights the candle under one end only.
- Watch for three minutes. Write down what the grains do — where they rise, where they travel, and where they sink.
- Draw the loop.
- Answer: nothing was pushed. What made the water move?
- Answer the hard one below.
The hard question
The plates move on the asthenosphere, and the asthenosphere is solid rock. This bowl is full of liquid water. So what exactly is this a model of?
Say the limitation before the flame is lit, not afterwards. What the bowl shows is that a hotter part of a material rises and a cooler part sinks, and that this makes a loop. What it does not show — and what a learner may honestly conclude from it if nobody says otherwise — is that a material has to be liquid to do that.
Hot solid rock flows. Glacier ice flows downhill for years without ever melting. The asthenosphere does the same thing, far slower and far hotter, and the evidence that it is solid is that S-waves cross it, which they could not do if it were liquid.
A model that is quietly wrong teaches the wrong thing quietly. This one is worth running anyway, because the circulation is real and visible and no diagram conveys it. It is only worth running with the limitation said out loud.
Assessment
| Seen | What it means |
|---|---|
| The loop drawn correctly and the limitation stated in the learner's own words | Full understanding, and the modelling skill the performance standard asks for |
| The loop drawn correctly, the hard question answered it is a model of the mantle | Half. True, and it does not engage with the difference |
| This proves the mantle is liquid | The exact failure the warning exists to prevent. It is the teacher's fault, not the learner's, and it is fixable in one sentence |
| Prediction written after the flame was lit | Ask for a prediction on the next practical and mean it |
If there is no candle, no tin and no rice
Hold a hand above a hot pot in the kitchen at home and feel the rising air; the loop is the same and it cannot be drawn from watching. Or simply run the activity as steps 6 and 7 in discussion, with the drawing done from the class's own descriptions of a pot of boiling water. It is weaker, and it is honest to say so — the grains circulating are the part that convinces.
Activity 4 — Reading the Archipelago (group)
| Time | 35 minutes |
| Group size | 6 — works at 5 or 7 |
| Materials | A map of the Philippines showing mountains, faults, volcanoes and trenches — one per group. If there is none, a hand-drawn outline on the board and one shared printed copy |
| Preparation | Fifteen minutes: obtain or draw the map. See the note below. |
This activity previews Week 3's competency and it is placed here on purpose. Competency 3 asks learners to interpret this country's features in relation to plate tectonics, and interpretation needs this week's table. Doing a first pass now means Week 3 starts from reading rather than from labelling.
About the map
A real map is needed and this pack does not supply one. PHIVOLCS publishes maps of active volcanoes, faults and trenches, and a division office or a school atlas will have something usable.
An outline copied onto the board carries most of the activity — the coastline, the main island groups, and the features marked as the class finds them. What it cannot carry is scale and precision, so a group should not be asked to measure anything from it. Say which map you are using and what it can and cannot support.
Roles — everybody has one
| Role | What they do | How many |
|---|---|---|
| Locator | Finds each feature on the map and points to it | 1 |
| Classifier | Says which boundary type would produce it, using the class table | 1 |
| Challenger | Asks how do you know for every classification | 1 |
| Recorder | Writes the group's list: feature, location, boundary type | 1 |
| Direction Reader | Works out which way the plates must be moving for that feature to be there | 1 |
| Reporter | Takes one finding to the class in one sentence | 1 |
Instructions
- Find and mark: one trench, one volcano, one mountain range, one fault.
- For each, the Classifier names the boundary type that produces it and the Challenger asks how they know. The reason goes in the record, not just the answer.
- The Direction Reader says which way the plates must be moving for each.
- Answer: how many different boundary types can you find evidence for in this one country?
- Answer: what does that tell you about where this archipelago sits?
- Each learner writes the group's four findings and one sentence answering step 5.
The answers to steps 4 and 5
More than one. Trenches and volcanoes are convergent; a long fault system running through the islands is transform motion. That combination is unusual and it is the reason for the curriculum guide's phrase "geologically dynamic".
Step 5: this archipelago sits where several plates meet, and it is being built and shaken by that meeting continuously. The features on the map are not scenery — they are the record of the process, and they are still happening.
Rubric — 12 marks
| Criterion | 3 | 2 | 1 | 0 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Four features found | All four, located and named | Three | Two | Fewer than two |
| Each one classified with a reason | Every classification has a how do you know recorded | Most have reasons | One reason given | Names only |
| Direction worked out | Movement direction given for all four | Two or three | One | Not attempted |
| Step 5 answered | More than one boundary type, and what that means for this country | More than one type identified | One type identified | Not addressed |
Activity 5 — Five Claims (individual)
| Time | 15 minutes |
| Materials | Paper and pencil |
| Preparation | None. |
The five statements
Each one is wrong. All five are said by adults, printed in books, and drawn in diagrams.
- "The plates float on a sea of molten magma."
- "Wherever two plates crash together, you get a trench."
- "The plate boundary runs along the coastline."
- "Nothing happens at a transform boundary, because nothing is built there."
- "Volcanoes only happen where plates crash together."
Instructions
- For each, write one sentence saying what is wrong with it.
- For each, write one sentence saying what the speaker should have said instead.
- For statement 1, write the evidence — not just the correction.
- Choose the one you think you were closest to believing at the start of the week. Not marked.
- Write one sentence explaining statement 2 to somebody in Grade 7.
The answers
| # | What is wrong | What to say instead |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | The asthenosphere is solid rock | It flows extremely slowly while staying solid — and S-waves cross it, which they could not do through a liquid |
| 2 | Only where something sinks | Two continental plates converging build mountains with no trench at all |
| 3 | Coastlines are made by sea level | The Mid-Atlantic Ridge is a boundary thousands of kilometres from any coast |
| 4 | Nothing built is not nothing happening | Shallow earthquakes, close to the surface, close to where people live |
| 5 | Divergent boundaries erupt more or less continuously | That is how ocean floor is made — gently, which is why nobody pictures it |
Why step 4 is unmarked and asked anyway
Naming the misconception you were closest to is the beginning of not making it, and a learner being graded on the answer will pick a safe one. Say it is unmarked before they start, and mean it.
Assessment
Step 5 is the one to read. Explaining to a younger learner why some collisions make trenches and others do not, without the words subduction or density, is genuinely difficult — and a learner who manages it has the idea rather than the vocabulary.
| Seen | What it means |
|---|---|
| All five corrected, step 3 gives the S-wave evidence, and step 5 is clear to a younger reader | Full understanding |
| All five corrected, step 3 says only it is solid | The claim without the evidence. It is the difference between knowing and being able to show |
| Statement 2 defended | Convergent is still one thing. It is the most persistent of the five and it needs Activity 2 again, not another explanation |
| Statement 1 defended | Ordinary. It is in a great many published diagrams, drawn in orange, and correcting it once is not enough |
If there are no books, no candle and no map
- No hardback books — two exercise books, two flat stones, or two learners' hands palm to palm. The buckling and the sliding both show perfectly well.
- No spare paper for the models — one demonstration at the front, done twice, with a different pair of learners doing it the second time. Weaker than every learner handling it, and it is honest to say which one you are running.
- No candle — Activity 3 becomes a discussion of a pot of water boiling at home, with the loop drawn from the class's descriptions. The limitation about liquids still has to be said, and it matters more when nobody has watched the grains.
- No map at all — Activity 4 can run on a board outline with the features marked as the class recalls them, but do not let the class invent locations. A feature nobody can place should be left off the board and written on a list of things to look up, and that list is a good thing for Week 3 to begin with.
Part of the E-turo MATATAG artifact set. Companion files:
syllabus.md · lesson-plan.md ·
lesson-plan-ilaw.md · worksheet.html