Teaching earth sciences to kids

Christine McLelland, a high-school teacher in Englewood, Colo., believes students need to understand the Earth, the processes that created it, and what’s happening to it, and she is addressing that need as the Geological Society of America’s (GSA’s) distinguished earth science educator for 2002-2003.

Now in its third year, the GSA program encourages the teaching of earth sciences in the classroom. McLelland wants to see that support extended to elementary, middle and secondary schools.

“I want to use this opportunity at GSA to assist teachers with lesson plans for earth science topics,” says McLelland, who teaches at Englewood High School. “My main focus is to make the GSA web site a place where earth science teachers commonly go for ideas and support.”

A geologist by training, McLelland began expanding the GSA’s web-based resources for earth science teachers when she was hired in September 2002. Teachers can visit www.geosociety.org/educate/ for resource information and download lesson plans for students aged five to 18.

Getting students interested and engaged is always a challenge. Using an idea borrowed from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, McLelland developed a lesson plan called “If You Bit a Rock,” which uses candy bars to help students observe and understand textures of common rocks. The students are given rock kits containing 10 hand-sized rock samples, 10 plastic magnifying lenses, a lesson plan, and a CD-ROM.

McLelland invites teachers with lesson plans of their own to share them by posting them on the web site. She also provides links to other sites, one of which, from Purdue University, teaches elementary students to make pancakes as a way of understanding the Earth’s molten state and the geologic effects of unequal heating and cooling.

McLelland has also put together a rock cycle text and diagram, and is working on a “virtual field trip,” designed to investigate rocks and minerals used to construct buildings in downtown Denver.

— The preceding is from an information bulletin published by the Boulder, Colo.-based Geological Society of America.