Geology Activities: Geoscience Lessons for Grades 8, 9, & 10
These geology resources use a fresh and modern format to pull students into authentic texts from well-known geoscience organizations. They’re versatile, effective, and really easy to use.
Each activity is a webquest: Students search online texts to find the answers to a series of questions.
1.) Share the PDF webquest file with links embedded in immersive images to student computers.
2.) Print the worksheets for student responses.
That’s it! Your class is ready to start learning.
Introduce or Review Core Geology Vocabulary and Ideas
The teaching resources below are versatile activities that can be used at any stage of the learning process.
Use as an Introduction: Each geology activity can be used to instill key ideas and vocabulary. Your students do not need to have prior knowledge of any lesson topic to learn from the online texts. Each text was carefully vetted to be clearly understandable to middle and high school students, whether or not they have prior earth science education or any familiarity with the specific geology topic at hand.
Use for Reinforcement: Each lesson can also be used midway through a unit plan to shore up your class’s understanding of important concepts. You may have already presented your students with what they need to know. These instructional activities can be used to deepen and fortify your students’ comprehension of essential geology concepts.
Use for Review: Each lesson can also be easily put to use when it’s time to review at the end of a unit or at the end of the year. Since there aren’t any additional materials to gather or complicated steps to manage, you’ll find each activity to be a relatively effortless solution for students to review, especially during school testing days, school suspensions, and sub days.
Resources to Save Prep and Planning Time
• There are no confusing or complicated steps to follow. Just share each webquest to student computers, print the worksheet that goes with it, and get started!
• No pre-teaching is needed. The linked informational texts can be understood by students with or without prior knowledge on each topic.
• No special technology is needed. If your class has computers and internet access, you are good to go.
• There are no additional materials to gather. These geology activities are self-contained.
Geology Activities: An Overview
These instructional activities explain main concepts that middle and high school geology and earth science students should know. Click on a lesson name to drill down to more details:
Rock Cycle and Rock Types Activity
This resource explains the processes of the rock cycle and three main types of rock: sedimentary, metamorphic, and igneous. Students also find out about Earth’s layers, tectonic theory, intrusive and extrusive igneous rock, magma, and lava.
Weathering, Erosion, and Deposition Activity
This resource describes the geologic processes of weathering, erosion, and deposition. Glacial, coastal, and stream processes of weathering, erosion, and deposition are given special attention. Students also learn about chemical and physical weathering, agents of weathering and erosion, and mass wasting incidents.
This learning activity explains tectonic shift, plate boundaries (convergent, divergent, and transform), layers of Earth (crust, mantle, core), and faults. Students also learn about the lithosphere, the asthenosphere, subduction, fold mountains, and the mid-ocean ridge system.
In this lesson, students find out about volcanoes (composite and shield), magma chambers, basalt and pyroclastic flows, lava, the volcanically-created mid-ocean ridges, supervolcanoes, and scientific findings about Earth’s interior gained from the study of volcanoes.
Earthquakes and Tsunamis Activity
This resource explains the causes and processes of earthquakes and tsunamis. Students also learn about faults, subduction, seismic wave types, epicenters, hypocenters, and seismological tools and techniques (such as seismographs, seismograms, and triangulation).
Included in Each Geology Activity
Each lesson contains three PDF documents:
1.) An electronic PDF webquest with clickable links to online texts exclusively from reputable organizations in the geosciences including the United States Geological Survey (USGS), the American Geosciences Institute, the National Park Service, and more. The webquest leads students through a series of clickable links embedded into stunning images of natural geologic features (see previews above). Students simply click through the activity to reach the online texts.
2.) A printable PDF worksheet of approximately 17 questions. The questions follow the sequence of the webquest links.
3.) A complete printable PDF answer key
You May Also Like These Earth Science Lessons
Each Activity is Half-Price as Part of the Full Set
Every geology webquest is downloadable as an individual activity. You can also save half the cost of each one when you get it as part of the complete Earth and Space Science Set. The full set cohesively supports student understanding of key topics in middle and high school earth and space science. It includes twenty lessons, divided into four core areas: geology, hydrology, meteorology, and astronomy. There are five lessons on each core area. Each teaching resource follows the same easy-to-use format.
Click the image below to view the full set.
