USING FIELD SITES TO TEACH EARTH SCIENCE DURING A FIVE-DAY TEACHER-TRAINING WORKSHOP

Earth science is much more meaningful to students when they experience it themselves. Teachers who have little or no formal training in Earth science may feel intimidated taking students in the field because of questions the students may raise. In Connecticut several schools and the Connecticut Geological and Natural History Survey have been working together to develop field-oriented teacher training workshops. With a grant from the Long Island Sound License Plate Fund, a five-day workshop was developed to study the geology of the coastal drainage basins. The workshop introduces teachers to the identification of drainage basins while learning to use topographic maps. Stream water movement and sediment deposition are studied in the field through a series of exercises. Teachers see the various types of bedrock found in the coastal basins by meeting at a different site each day. An old quarry site allows examination of variation within one rock formation over a several acre area. By visiting numerous sites, a variety of gneisses and schists are seen, including some rocks that fall across the border between the two, which demonstrates how a sample or two of each rock type seen in a lab does not represent the real world.

The coastal parks are used to study beach processes, differences in sand across the state due to the differences in bedrock, and as a good place to use stream tables, using the available sand and water, without being left with a lot of mess to clean. One bedrock site near a beach was an excellent place to learn the law of crosscutting relationships due to its numerous veins and small faults. Grain size variation in sandstones and cooling features in basalts were also observed in the field. Each teacher received an 80-page resource guide with lesson plans. Time was left each day for discussion of ways teachers might use what they learned that day with their own students. Although the sites were chosen to teach specific lessons, other sites could also be used for each lesson.