Free Open Educational Resources for the Geosciences. The landing page provides links to three textbooks designed for use with introductory courses in Physical Geology, Historical Geology, and Mineralogy. Content contained within each of these books can be utilized across many related courses. The text is written as much as possible at a high school level. Interactive content and quizzes are sprinkled throughout for a better student experience.

Cross Orchards is a part of the Museums of Western Colorado. Curator of Cross Orchards Matt Darling, tells us a bit of the history behind what was once the largest fruit and land company in the valley. He takes us from the 1890s when Walter and Elizabeth Cross began their venture all the way to what Cross Orchards is today. The Red Cross Land and Fruit Company was established in 1899 and operated a massive orchard on the site until 1923. Today it is a living farm museum open to field trips, local events and historical demonstrations. Field trips are welcome.

The Passport to the Universe space show reveals the universe's wonders in a way never before possible in a planetarium. This comprehensive guide to the space show is designed to help you maximize your viewing. It includes background information to help you prepare for your planetarium field trip, detailed information about what you'll see before and during the show and suggestions for several pre- and post-visit activities to do with your students. There are notes about how the show addresses performance standards and curriculum requirements.

The Pastime Saloon: Stop 8 Museum of the West Virtual Tour. Watch this short video to learn about a Museum of the West exhibit or collection to preview your field trip or for a virtual field trip if you are unable to attend in person. The Museum of the West is part of the Museums of Westen Colorado. Saloons were gathering places during the early days of Grand Junction. Curator of History, David Bailey, describes what went on in these gathering places.

This optional field trip is designed to augment the in-class learning experience in introductory physical geology by providing students the opportunity to see firsthand local geological features and understand their context in the long-term tectonic evolution of the western United States. The university is conveniently located in a portion of the American west where a plethora of geological features are readily accessible over a total field trip duration of 6 hours. Over a total of 6 field stops, students are presented with an opportunity to observe features relevant to topics learned in class involving rock types, volcanic features (lava flows and ash fall deposits), faults and folds, mass wasting features, catastrophic flood deposits (Bonneville and Missoula floods), and loess deposits.

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Social distancing can be tough, and we are all in need of a little positivity! This week’s virtual Read & Seed will help us transform our neighborhood into that of something beautiful. We will read Maybe Something Beautiful: How Art Transformed a Neighborhood by F. Isabel Campoy, Theresa Howell, and Rafael López and create our own positivity posters with nature as our inspiration. We will also participate in a Movement/Music/Finger Play activity by singing The More We Get Together. This lesson is aimed at connecting young learners to their natural world and promote school readiness skills. This Read & Seed activity is presented by The Gardens on Spring Creek by the City of Fort Collins. https://youtu.be/qaKv_ozqklo

Social distancing can be tough, and we are all in need of a little positivity! This week’s virtual Read & Seed will help us transform our neighborhood into that of something beautiful. We will read Maybe Something Beautiful: How Art Transformed a Neighborhood by F. Isabel Campoy, Theresa Howell, and Rafael López and create our own positivity posters with nature as our inspiration. We will also participate in a Movement/Music/Finger Play activity by singing The More We Get Together. This lesson is aimed at connecting young learners to their natural world and promote school readiness skills. This Read & Seed activity is presented by The Gardens on Spring Creek by the City of Fort Collins. https://www.fcgov.com/gardens/files/read-seed-website-positivity-posters.pdf?1588101864

Students produce a set of eight personal travel 'insights' from field trips within their bioregion. Each insight consists of an image produced by the student and accompanying text; students are producers of meaning rather than consumers.

(Note: this resource was added to OER Commons as part of a batch upload of over 2,200 records. If you notice an issue with the quality of the metadata, please let us know by using the 'report' button and we will flag it for consideration.)

Short history of the Railroad in Grand Valley and historical timeline for the railroad with photos and diagrams.

Middle School Paleontology Kit Module from Museums of the West in Grand Junction, CO. Lesson 2 on Relative Dating from the Middle School Paleontology Kit Module. The lesson provides students with an understanding of how geologists and paleontologists use the Law of Superposition about rock layers and stratigraphic mapping to provide a relative way of dating fossile finds and rock origins. Lessons 1, 2, 3 and 5 can be completed without access to the Fossil Kit from Museums of Western Colorado. Lesson 4 uses fossile from the kit. District 51 personnel can request a kit to complete Lesson 4. See this URL for an overview of the module and a link to the Teacher's guide to Paleontology: https://www.museumofwesternco.com/classroom-resources/stem-lessons/

Students build on their understanding and feel for flow rates, as gained from the associated Faucet Flow Rate activity, to estimate the flow rate of a local river. The objective is to be able to relate laboratory experiment results to the environment. They use the U.S. Geological Survey website (http://waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis/rt) to determine the actual flow rate data for their river, and compare their estimates to the actual flow rate. For this activity to be successful, choose a nearby river and take a field trip or show a video so students gain a visual feel for the flow of the nearby river.

This exercise is part of a field trip lab in which we see map different till deposits. At a small, meandering sand-bed river in Minnesota, students are directed to wander along the riverbank and pick up gravel-sized rocks. When they each have a handful, I lay a table-sized, laminated map of Minnesota bedrock geology on the ground. I ask the students to identify their rocks, then find the corresponding bedrock units on the map and throw their rocks down in those regions. Soon we have a pile of rocks in northwestern Minnesota into Canada (weathered shales, weathered limestones), northern and northeastern Minnesota (granites, gneisses, basalts and rhyolites if we are lucky) and central Minnesota (dolomite, sandstones, granites). This visually demonstrates that glaciers transported stones from many distant locations and brought them here to southern Minnesota. In addition, we talk about how the river is down-cutting through consecutive layers of till and mixing those particles together in the stream deposits. The exercise gives students practice in identifying rocks, reading maps, and synthesizing different fields of geology to answer a geomorphic question about glacial transport.
Designed for a geomorphology course
Has minimal/no quantitative component

(Note: this resource was added to OER Commons as part of a batch upload of over 2,200 records. If you notice an issue with the quality of the metadata, please let us know by using the 'report' button and we will flag it for consideration.)

Short history of Rock Art styles and historical timeline for Rock Art on the Colorado Plateau with photos and diagrams.

Elementary student scavenger hunt for use on a field trip to the Museum of the West exhibits

This is a Stratigraphy Sedimentary Petrology field trip stop at an exceptional glacial outwash gravel quarry, where students measure, identify and count clast types, measure cross-bedding directions, and examine the early stages of lithification of gravel to conglomerate. The gravel deposits are also representative of the local surficial aquifer material that lies nearby in the subsurface.

(Note: this resource was added to OER Commons as part of a batch upload of over 2,200 records. If you notice an issue with the quality of the metadata, please let us know by using the 'report' button and we will flag it for consideration.)

Planting seeds can be hard work! They require a lot of care and a lot of patience, as we will learn from our story this week. During this virtual Read & Seed we will read The Carrot Seed by Ruth Krauss and Crockett Johnson. Participate in a Movement/Music/Finger Play activity by singing a garden song, and create seed tape to plant and start your own garden. This lesson is aimed at connecting young learners to their natural world and promote school readiness skills. This Read & Seed activity is presented by The Gardens on Spring Creek by the City of Fort Collins. https://youtu.be/3ER8I--SRbU

Planting seeds can be hard work! They require a lot of care and a lot of patience, as we will learn from our story this week. During this virtual Read & Seed we will read The Carrot Seed by Ruth Krauss and Crockett Johnson. Participate in a Movement/Music/Finger Play activity by singing a garden song, and create seed tape to plant and start your own garden. This lesson is aimed at connecting young learners to their natural world and promote school readiness skills. This Read & Seed activity is presented by The Gardens on Spring Creek by the City of Fort Collins. https://www.fcgov.com/gardens/files/read-seed-website-seed-tape.pdf?1590515650

One of the difficult concepts for students to understand is how stacked parasequences form and what they tell us about the interaction between relative sea-level change and sediment supply. A dated but easily manipulated (and free) modeling program (Fuzzim) allows the creation of increasingly complex depositional scenarios. A single parasequence generated over one sea-level cycle demonstrates the relationship between the rate of sea-level rise and transgression/regression. By superimposing shorter sub-cycles, the model builds aggrading, prograding and retreating depositional packages. The sea-level curve, initial topography (e.g., ramps vs. more abrupt shelf margins), and sediment supply can be easily modified by the instructor or the student. Students work through basic model set-up and complete several model runs. They are encouraged to modify input conditions and explore the effects on sedimentary output. The goal is to develop an intuitive understanding of how large-scale sedimentary cycles relate to the interplay between sea level and sediment supply. In the course at Oberlin College, model output is used in conjunction with a Walther's Law exercise (will be available) and a week-end field trip where the sedimentary cycles generated by the model can be observed in outcrop. This approach integrates the use of hand samples, thin sections, and outcrop observation to provide a hands-on connection to the more abstract concepts developed by the models.

(Note: this resource was added to OER Commons as part of a batch upload of over 2,200 records. If you notice an issue with the quality of the metadata, please let us know by using the 'report' button and we will flag it for consideration.)

Students take virtual field trips to explore air quality research sites and investigate the causes, effects, and solutions to nitrogen deposition in Rocky Mountain National Park during this module.