Plate Tectonics

As I have taught Plate Tectonics these past few years, I have begun to love the subject and have looked for ways to make it easier to understand for my middle school students.  It is a hard concept to comprehend when you realize that the entire surface of the Earth is moving.  I found the model that I used in my lesson from a website by a Purdue University professor, http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~braile/edumod/foammod/foammod.htm.
The models were easy to make and in fact did not cost me anything because as I looked  through my house and my parents, I found enough foam to make all of the models that I need.  The students had a great time using the models and even though they had covered Plate Tectonics in sixth grade, many of the students stated that they understood better how the movement of the plates caused valleys and mountains.  I enjoyed the models and have used clay models in the past, but the bigger foam models worked better and the students had a great time causing the mountains to pop up.  I am definitely saving my foam models to use with my sixth graders when we study plate tectonics in a few weeks.