This site has information about where the tectonic plates were located in the Pleistocene and throughout geologic time. You can view animations of the plates moving or download models. Full description.

In this activity, students use a field outcrop map to construct an interpretive geologic map and geologic cross-section of the same area. Data sheets, an answer sheet, and supplemental maps for the teacher are inlcuded. Full description.

This site has directions for a classroom activity in which students plot locations of major Southern California earthquakes on a map. A table listing major earthquakes, when they occurred, their locations and their magnitudes is included. There is also a set of questions for the students to answer once they have plotted the earthquake data on their map. This site is in PDF format. Full description.

After a teacher led discussion (some background provided), students will break into groups and recreate global maps at four different points in earth's history. By completing this exploration activity, the learner will: recognize that continents of the western hemisphere "fit" together, create a model that demonstrates the similarity of the continents, identify the major tectonic plates, and calculate ... Full description.

This is a general structural geology page where some pictures and definitions of fault blocks can be found. Full description.

In this activity, students plot the locations of earthquakes on a world map for a week or more, and examine their distribution in relationship to Earth's plate boundaries. It includes a bilingual vocabulary list (Spanish/English). Full description.

In this activity, learners will investigate the seismicity in southern California around the time of the 1992 Landers, California earthquake, which at magnitude 7.3 was the largest earthquake to strike the region in 40 years. Scientific studies into the circumstances surrounding these events and their connection to the Landers earthquake were carried out, primarily because of the hazard that 'triggered' ... Full description.

This activity is designed to familiarize the learner with the concepts of strike and dip, to make further studies of faults and fault models easier. It also introduces learners to a few key elements of seismology, which will be seen again later in much greater detail. Knowledge of how to solve basic trigonometric equations is needed for this activity. To describe a fault plane in simple terms, geologists ... Full description.

This is a short lesson about scarp formation. The answer is provided as an animated GIF. This example points out a general rule of fault-related geology: the apparent offset of a feature (in this case, level ground offset vertically) is not always an indication of the actual displacement (horizontal cutting of a pre-existing scarp) along a fault. This is one of the more extreme examples of that rule. ... Full description.

This activity has two parts: the first part will demonstrate the weaknesses of simple fault models (like block diagrams) in depicting the process of fault rupture accurately; and the second part is centered around a fairly simple animation of rupture propagation, seen by an oblique map view, that attempts to show more accurately what we should envision when we think about fault rupture. This activity ... Full description.