Here you will find resources to help educators and their students use several present-day distributions of minerals, rock formations and fossils to help figure out the distribution of continents; construct a map showing the position of continents 250 million years ago by reversing the present direction of plate motion; recognize a convergence of presently widely scattered minerals, rock formation and fossils when all the continents where part of Pangea; compare present average community motions with that of the past 250 million years by calculating the average yearly rate of motion over the last 250 million years; describe the context in which the hypothesis of continental drift was proposed and why it was subjected to criticism; show that your community has moved through different ecological regions over time.

Here you will find resources to help educators and their students use maps to examine the distribution of earthquakes and volcanoes to the location of plate boundaries; explain the location, nature and cause of volcanic arcs in terms of plate tectonics; explain the location, nature and cause of hot spots; explain how plate-tectonic processes have caused continents to grow through geologic time; explain how plate-tectonic processes produce landforms; explain how plate tectonics can affect the interior of a continent.

Here you will find resources to help educators and their students to calculate the density of liquids and compare their densities with their position in a column of liquid; observe the effects of temperature on the density of a material; examine the natural heat flow from within the Earth; understand the results of uneven heating within the Earth; and understand the causes of the movement of lithospheric plates.

Here you will find resources to help educators and their students classify and label the types of movement at plate boundaries, using a world map that shows relative plate motion; identify the distribution of plates by means of the world map of relative plate motions; describe the present plate-tectonic setting of your community and infer possible past plate-tectonic activity based on your knowledge.

Here you will find resources to help educators and their students determine the direction and rate of the movement of positions within the plate on which your community is located, using data from GPS and a computer model; predict the position of your community in the near future, and "retrodict" its position in the recent past, by extrapolating from data already collected; recognize that the rate and direction of plate motion is not necessarily constant; describe several lines of evidence for plate motion.

Here you will find storylines for EarthComm: Earth's Dynamic Geosphere Chapter 3: Earthquakes and Your Community.