Shake It Up: Grade 2 Scientists Simulate Earth Movements in STEM Activities

In class with Lower School science teacher Emily Davies, the students have been studying how the earth can move. The first half of the unit focused on erosion, specifically how the earth can be moved on the surface by wind and water and how we can design structures to slow erosion. For a more hands-on lesson, Mrs. Davies brought the class outside to the playground to simulate erosion in the real world. The students blew through straws on dirt, woodchips, and sand to simulate wind erosion while Mrs. Davies created mountains in the soil and ran water through them to simulate water erosion.

The class then investigated how the earth moves from the inside out using demonstrations with frosting and graham crackers to simulate tectonic plates as they crash together, move apart, or rub against each other. Additionally, they learned about the breakup of the supercontinent of Pangea and then made their own versions where they drew a supercontinent, then broke it apart, and wrote about what evidence there was that the pieces used to be connected.

The culminating project for the unit was creating shake tables to simulate earthquakes. The students worked in groups of two to build structures using trays and clipboards as the table base, sticks, and clay as the bonding agent. As the students finished one structure, they would add it on top of the tray and place a rubber band around it before adding another tray on top. The goal was to see how high the students can build their structures before testing time. Once the groups were done, each student pulled on the side of the clipboard to see if what they built could withstand the shaking.