A one day workshop on teaching seismology at the K-12 grade level was held June 8, 1997 at the annual IRIS workshop in Breckenridge Colorado. The workshop, Seismologists Learning To Teach The Teachers, was hosted by the new Education and Outreach committee to encourage and assist IRIS members in developing outreach programs in their own community. The goals of the workshop were to introduce participants to current practices in K-12 science classrooms and to engage them in some new activities that allow students to learn science by doing science. The workshop was designed to provide ideas and materials so that the participants can conduct similar one day workshops in their own community.
We began the day with an ice breaker activity in which participants were given a list of questions about K-12 education and were asked to find the answers by asking others in the workshop. Leonard Johnson was the most successful at this activity and won a Nutrageous candy bar for his efforts. Larry Braile followed with an overview of the new National Science Standards which provide a framework for developing effective programs for outreach and teacher education in the sciences. Two K-12 teachers, Sheryl Braile, from Burtsfield Elementary School, West Layfayette, Indiana and Graciela Rendon-Coke, from Cibola High School, Yuma, Arizona shared vignettes of their experiences in the classroom that helped elucidate the new directions in science education and the role scientists can fill in making science a success in K-12.
Learning science is best done by doing science, thus most of the day was spent doing everything from developing models of the interior of the earth to designing buildings for earthquake safety. Larry and Sheryl Braile introduced an activity in which students created clay models of the earth. The challenge was to divide the clay into three balls that represented the volume of the crust, mantle outer core and inner core. Although all the participants could probably easily rattle off the depth to the important boundaries in the earth, dividing the layers by volume provided many an new view of the Earth and insight into struggles a student might have in visualizing the Earth. IRIS Chairman, Adam Dziewonski confided that his clay model gave him new insight into Earth structure and provided ideas for a new NSF proposal.
Michelle Hall-Wallace and Graciela Rendon-Coke introduced an activity from Seismic Sleuths (AGU and FEMA, 1996) in which participants investigated the natural frequency of buildings to determine the relationship between frequency of shaking and height of a building. Participants also learned how the horizontal forces associated with earthquakes pass through a building and how to reinforce a structure to withstand the forces. Participants knowledge was put to the test with a challenge to build a structure of Styrofoam and tooth picks that would withstand the greatest horizontal force. John Tabor and Jeff Barker were the clear winners and took home the prize of a National Enquirer report on earthquakes and two Nutrageous candy bars.
Technology is an essential tool of a seismologist young or old, and several pieces of software suitable for the young were demonstrated. Seismic and Seismic Waves, written by Alan Jones, were introduced as well as software from the Princeton Earth Physics Project, TASAs Plate Tectonics and others. Unfortunately, our plans for locating earthquakes with a human model of ray paths and travel time calculations were canceled due to rain and the possibility that dispersion would adversely affect our results.
IRIS will provide each participant with the materials needed to offer a similar workshop for 20 teachers in their community this coming year. The outcome of the workshop is that more than 400 teachers nationwide will be introduced to new methods and materials for teaching earthquakes in the K-12 classroom. Due to the popularity of the workshop, co-convenors, Larry Braile and Michelle Hall-Wallace are planning to offer a similar workshop again next year.
