Earthquake Discussion Questions

Wakefieldium has just been struck by an earthquake. You are a scientist with the USGS and need to figure out all the specifics on the earthquake because an earthquake has never occurred here before. You have a few things to do as a person working for the USGS to keep your job as the seismologist on staff.
1. Using the 3 seismograms recorded, figure out the epicenter location using the data and the P/S wave time-travel graph. One of the seismograms has been done for you.
2. Determine if the earthquake came from a fault line or was a result of nuclear fracking and be able to use data to show the cause of the earthquake. If is it natural, what type of boundary and what were the plates involved?
3. If the magnitude of the Earthquake was
Where might you run into trouble carrying out the differentiation in this lesson? I can see running into problems with differentiation if somehow their pre-assessment was not accurate. This would be an issue that could come up if they get the information ahead of time from another class and are able to fulfill the pre-assessment more accurately than their actual knowledge. Thus, when given the actual assignment based upon readiness, the student will
If this is being done all the time with every lesson, it would not be an issue. However, the students are not used to this and change is hard and many students resist something different. They are not used to being challenged at their own level rather the assignment is normally too hard or too easy for the majority of the students. Many times, students tease each other according to their learning ability. This is something that as I begin differentiation, we need to make sure that we discuss respect for all and that every person has a strength, which they should take pride in. Every person learns differently and as long as I model respect in the classroom for all, the students will normally reciprocate that behavior to their peers also in your classroom environment. The last issue that could cause problems in carrying out differentiation is rationalizing to administration that everyone is doing different lessons within the classroom. Even though ultimately, all of the students will have the same learning objectives, many administrators believe that everyone should be taught the same and if they came in and observed it could be an issue. This is why it is so important to discuss with the administration how you teach your class and the rationale behind