Earthworks, a professional development workshop for secondary school science teachers sponsored by CU-Boulder's Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, or CIRES, will run through June 27.
"The goal of our program is to help middle and high school teachers design Earth science curriculum for their students," says Genny Healy, CIRES' Earthworks coordinator. "Our philosophy is that people learn science by doing science. We teach scientific inquiry using a hands-on approach and help teachers find new strategies for bringing science into the classroom."
The annual program began on June 21 and is free to selected applicants from across the United States. CIRES supplies participants with travel expenses, lodging, meals and curriculum materials.
This year, 24 teachers will take part in the workshop, nine of them returning participants.
Scientists work with the teachers in small teams, conducting fieldwork, taking observations and joining in discussions. The scientists come from a variety of disciplines and institutions including the University of Colorado at Boulder and CIRES scientists based at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration labs around Boulder, Colorado State University and the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
The workshop setting offers many options for Earth science projects. Held at the 1,040-acre Cal-Wood Environmental Education Center northwest of Boulder, Cal-Wood contains an old homestead and an abandoned mica mine. Its forested grounds teem with deer, elk, black bear, mountain lion and bird populations.
Edie Clark, a sixth-grade science teacher from Cornerstone Academy, a middle school in the Spring Branch Independent School District in Houston, is returning for her third summer at Earthworks.
Her first year, Clark developed a project correlating weather to air pollution, for which her students learned to assess cloud types and take measurements of such weather variables as temperature, wind direction, wind speed and percentage of cloud cover. They also learned how to detect ozone levels and to note how the levels changed with the weather.
The project was so successful that Clark was awarded a $5,000 grant from British Petroleum this year.
"We used the money for new ozone detectors and other lab equipment," Clark said. "Subsequently, we received two additional grants for class work based on my Earthworks projects."
The grants helped fund the purchase of nets, water test kits and books for the pond and creek study Clark developed during Earthworks 2002. Clark's students compared a pond near their school with a creek in the area. The project explored how the movement of water affects the chemistry of the water and the diversity of living things found in it, she said.
"Our studies take place in a heavily impacted urban area," Clark said. "My goal is to have the kids help educate the Spring Valley community about the value of not dumping fluids into storm drains, so we'll continue that project this year.
"Also in 2003 I want to develop a curriculum for a lichen study connected to air pollution, so I need to learn how to conduct lichen sampling."
Preparation at Earthworks seems to be paying off for teachers.
"Our principal readily supports these project-based studies because the kids do spectacularly well on their state tests," Clark said. "The program is great. Teachers should really know about Earthworks."
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