OVERCOMING SCIENCE FEARS WITH FOSSILS - TEACHING THE PROCESS AND INSTILLING CONFIDENCE

For middle school and older students, learning the process and gaining confidence in the ability to "do" science may be daunting. A simple, enjoyable exercise based on Neogene sediment with well-preserved fossils from the North Carolina Coastal Plain has proved to be a means of overcoming that problem. Participants receive a small quantity of the sediment, a piece of window screen, a pan of water, and a sheet that illustrates common fossils found at the collection site. Before the sediment is processed, the students are shown the collection site locality on a geologic map and are told the approximate age of the sediment. Each person washes sediment through the screen, which easily concentrates the fossils. The group is told that each person should pick out everything that looks important, to group similar things together, and then to identify as much as possible. Once that is done, the group is asked to make a composite list of everything that has been found, and the list is put up for everyone to see. The participants are then asked to list where those organisms live today. They quickly see that they have a store of knowledge from experience, books, movies, and classwork. They also collectively know that some types of animals live in a more limited range of conditions than do others. They are asked to determine, based on the data they collected, the type of environment the sediment represents. They are then redirected to the geologic map and asked to explain why the geographic location is different from their interpretation of the depositional environment. Generally, there are at least two explanations and those are examined by the group to provide the most logical explanation. In this process, participants learn to prepare study materials carefully, to collect and record data, to use a data bank to make interpretations, and to question interpretations and come to logical conclusions.