Free NSF NGF Animations: A Quick Refresher on Plate Tectonics

[EarthScope]

Dear Educator, Welcome back, and happy new school year! We hope you had a chance to recharge this summer. As you plan those first few weeks, it's a great time to dive back into content starting with a fast, engaging way to introduce plate tectonics. The EarthScope-operated NSF National Geophysical Facility has a set of novice-level animations that do the heavy lifting for you. Start with What Are the Forces that Drive Plate Tectonics?, a 7-minute animation that unpacks ridge push, slab pull, and mantle convection with clear visuals. Pair it with Take 2: Plate vs. Crust to clear up the classic plate-vs-crust mix-up. Then move into Plate Boundaries: Three Types Described and the companion video Plate Boundaries: Convergent, Divergent, Transform to ground students in the three boundary types and the seismicity patterns tied to each. All four are short, classroom-ready, and come with closed captioning and narration scripts, making them easy to slot into a bell-ringer, homework, or flipped-classroom model. Pair these visuals with activities and lessons to give students hands on experiences to solidify the concepts introduced in the animations above. Once your students have that foundation, you're ready to deepen their learning. Build on the fundamentals with an intermediate-level set of resources focused on regional tectonics. This is a great next step for classes ready to apply the big-picture concepts to a specific place. You can find our collection of regional tectonics animations here: World Series: Regional Tectonics. We hope these resources help set the tone for a great year of science exploration.  Happy teaching, and here's to a fantastic year ahead! DeeDee Okamoto Instructional Designer I EarthScope Consortium 👋 Welcome to the August 2026 issue of the Educator Newsletter, a monthly newsletter with a focus on high-quality Earth science teaching resources for grades 6-20 from the EarthScope-operated NSF National Geophysical Facility (NGF). Was this email forwarded to you? Get yours: Subscribe here. We've just switched email sending platforms—going forward, you'll be able to read past newsletters here. https://www.earthscope.org/