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Picture of Russ in the classroom
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What causes what we see?

fog rising over a river in Wyoming

Teacher Resources

Continuing Education Opportunities for Teachers

Russ has written and produced materials for multiple online courses, with these materials available online for free. Most of the lab activities and challenges could be adapted for middle or high school students.

A listing of these courses and access to them is available here.

The Introductory Course Materials provide course notes and many lab activities and reasoning challenges suitable for supplemental use for an in-person class, or could be used as reading materials for someone wanting to get a better understanding of the four branches of earth science: historical geology, physical geology, weather and climate, and astronomy and planets.

The Advanced Course Materials are intended as a self-guided survey of Earth Science, starting from basic principles. These materials inlude video lectures from the field and lab, interactive text and videos with science reasoning challenges, and lab activites with detailed walk-through of challenges that arise in doing the labs. Topics of the course include how to read the stories in rocks, principles of stratigraphy, how we figure out what's inside the earth or in a distant star, geysers, radiometric dating, how clouds form, winds, landscape formation, what causes climate, energy balance of the earth, geochemical processes, planetary processes, and many more.

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Diversion Program art by Erin Colson

Artwork for the short story Diversion Program by Erin Colson

Teacher Resources

Short Stories and Classroom Science Activities

Russ edits and publishes short stories with earth science elements at their heart, appropriate for middle and high school students, along with suggestions for related classroom science activities at Fiction for the Classroom in Issues in Earth Science.

Topics include Phases of the Moon, Plate Tectonics, Deposition and Erosion, Radioactive Decay, Geysers, Tsunamis, Mineralogy, and others. Suggested activities include experimental investigations, library investigations (reading to understand), modeling, asking questions, application of math and engineering (STEM), and others.

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Would you like to be notified when new stories are published, or when other science education materials are available? Subscribe to Russ's science education newsletter for notification of new publications, and, in addition, get a free investigative activity involving classroom experiments with buoyancy and Google Earth. Email's will be few (no spamming), and your email address will not be shared.

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Amazing Landscapes!

Double Arch in Arches National Park, USA

Teacher Resources

Earth Science Challenges and Games

The online magazine Russ publishes, Issues in Earth Science, offers fun challenges for students and teachers, including a Common Misconception challenge, an Interpret the Rock Stories challenge, a challenge to see how many amazing landscapes you have seen, and a Life List challenge--how many amazing earth science finds or events have you experienced? Check it out at Earth Science Challenges!

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Learning to Read the Earth and Sky

Learning to Read the Earth and Sky cover

Teacher Resources

Science Education Books

Russ writes earth science books that tell stories from both the classroom and real research and that offer examples of classroom investigations focused on science as something that we do more than something that we know. His books emphasize doing experiments and field work, recognizing and interpreting patterns in data, and arguing from observational evidence rather than explaining theories. Russ considers what it means for a teacher to be a mentor and practitioner of science in the classroom. Learn more about his current and planned science education books here.

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Get Feedback from Russ on a Classroom Activity

Would you like a second opinion on a particular classroom activity that is available publically on the internet? Is it truly investigative? What are the actual expected learning outcomes? What challenges and problems might arise in the classroom?

Contact Russ with a short message and the URL link to the activity and Russ and Mary Colson, authors of Learning to Read the Earth and Sky, will evaluate the activity and post our thoughts on our teaching blog, The Teachers Corner, as well as contact you personally. The best way to become a mentor-scholar in the classroom is to interact with other teachers and scientists who have the same goal!

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©2024 - Russ Colson