Our 7th grade scientists in Ms. Tauriello’s class at Southport Middle School got hands-on with plate tectonics this week! Using graham crackers to represent Earth’s plates and frosting to represent magma, students modeled three types of plate boundaries: divergent, convergent, and transform. For each boundary, students moved their “plates,” drew arrows to show the direction of movement, and predicted which landforms would form, such as ridges, mountains, and faults. Students talked through what they were seeing with their classmates and connected the models to real processes happening beneath Earth’s surface. This hands-on lab helped students picture forces they can’t see and understand how plate movement shapes our planet through events like earthquakes, volcanoes, and mountain building. Great work, scientists!
