Looking for volcanoes activities to bring to your middle school classroom? It is such an AMAZING topic to teach. Volcanoes are so fascinating, powerful, and even sometimes kind of scary.
I guess they aren’t all the time though. Side note…I’ve visited Hawaii Volcanoes National Park before. Although I didn’t get to see some HUGE volcano with lava flowing out, there was still some fascinating stuff to see. There was a cool crater. We walked through a lava tube. We also visited some black sand beaches on the island as well.
I was ALL about this trip. However, my husband wasn’t as intrigued by it, and your students may be the same way.
How do you get them excited about learning about volcanoes? Use the WOW Factor!
In this post, I will share some WONDER strategies to add to your volcanoes lesson plans that will have your students wanting to learn more and more about this topic. Second, I will share a lesson on volcanoes that will help your students to OVERCOME the OVERWHELM of all of the content and vocabulary. Finally, I will share WIDEN strategies that will allow your students to learn beyond what state standards require.
Which volcanoes activities will you do?
Volcanoes Activity for Introduction
Before diving into the lesson, you want to get your students to be intrinsically motivated to learn! You’ll have to help them to become curious to learn about the topic so that it won’t be like “pulling teeth” when you share the content with them. Here are three volcanoes activities to hype your students up.
Can You Outrun Lava Flow?
Did you know that lava flow is not one of the most dangerous things when a volcano eruption occurs? The worst hazards are volcanic gases, pyroclastic flows, tsunamis, and lahars. You can read more about this here.
To introduce your students to this, I can give you two options: have a discussion or do a quick lab.
- Discussion: Ask your students the question, “Do you think you can outrun lava?”. Take a vote and have a class discussion on why you think that is. After, you can discuss how the speed of lava is dependent on different factors such as slope and viscosity. The average speed of lava flow is around .27 m/s, which is slow. There are, of course, exceptions!
- Have a “Race” : You can take your students outside to have them run for 3-5 seconds, and with measuring tape, measure how many meters they ran and calculate their speed. Did they beat .27 m/s? I’m sure they probably can! What about some of the faster speeds of lava flow?
Pompeii
One of the most well-known volcanic eruptions was in the city of Pompeii.
Introduce Pompeii before teaching about volcanoes to hook them in. It’s one of the more popular volcanoes activities to do!
Here’s another WONDER activity with 2 options.
- You can just have them do their own research, such as a webquest or exploration. Here are some websites to check out.
- You could also show a video about it! Here’s a playlist with several videos to choose from: Pompeii and Vesuvius Playlist
Explore Volcanic Activity Report
Another thing that you can do to hype your students up about learning more about volcanoes is to let them see what is currently happening!
Students can explore the weekly volcanic activity report. There is a lot of fascinating things here.
This report includes the name of the volcano, the location, the eruption start date, and the report status. If you click on the volcano, it gives you more information. It’s interesting to see how long some of these have been active.
You can also check out this volcanic activity map.
Volcanoes Science Lesson – Interactive
Now, your students are like WOW, volcanoes are awesome. So now is the best time to dive into the content. I love interactive lessons.
Interactive lessons go through middle school content to meet science standards. They are set up to present the information to the students without overwhelming them. How? The content is broken up into chunks with embedded activities to help students process the information one piece at a time.
The volcanoes lesson is no exception. Students will learn (without being overwhelmed), all about plate tectonics, magma and lava, where volcanoes are located, hot spots, active, dormant, and extinct volcanoes, VEI, and much more!
The volcanoes interactive activities include drag-and-drop activities, exploring resources outside of the lesson, answering critical thinking questions, a KWL, and more.
Students really enjoy using these to learn content.
You can find this resource in the Bright in the Middle Shop.
You can also find this resource on TPT.
Volcano Teaching Ideas to Widen Knowledge
Now that students have learned quite a bit about volcanoes, if time allows, they can complete a widen activity to allow them to show off what they have learned while learning even more. Here are three widen volcanoes activities that you can choose from to add to your volcanoes lesson plan.
Types of Volcanoes Activity
In the interactive lesson, students learned that there are 8 different types of volcanoes. As a widen activity, you can have your students choose one of these volcanoes (the most common being cinder cones, composite, and shield) to research and present their findings to the class.
Once students have their assigned (or chosen) volcano. Students can research the following items:
- size
- shape
- eruptions
- composition
- examples
Students can present their findings to the class through PowerPoint, a brochure, skit, poem, drawing, or any other way that they choose.
I love choice in the classroom! It’s another way to “hook” students in.
How to Stay Safe Presentation
Another research project that you can have students do (and present their findings in any way) is to have students create a PSA on how to stay safe during a volcanic eruption.
Students will need to research the hazards that are associated with volcanoes. Some of these are mentioned at the beginning of this post.
After researching the potential risks associated, they can create a poster, presentation, skit, or another presentation type to share tips for staying safe during a volcanic eruption.
This can be turned into a great problem-based learning assignment.
VR Experience Volcanoes Activities
If you have access to any VR goggles, another fun activity to do is look at 360° views on YouTube. Just type in “YouTube 360 volcanoes” and some neat ones will pop up! If you don’t have VR goggles, you can just watch the video anyway!
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