The History of the Earth in the hallways
<p><span>There is widespread agreement among my fellow colleagues who teach Geology that the History of our planet is a tough topic for teenagers. Unfortunately, not only is the subject considered boring but also useless by the majority of our school students.</span></p><p><span>Our experience teaching these contents in a traditional way has shown us that pupils vaguely remember anything. In order to give a different approach to this issue and, therefore, to promote meaningful learning, we have designed a project where students must be fully engaged.</span></p><p><span>First, the class was organized in cooperative learning groups, so they had to collaborate to complete the task. Then, they started the research period using laptop computers available in the school. Students now dealt with specific vocabulary such as the geologic time scale terms but also a variety of events that occurred from the very first moments, from the formation of the Earth itself to the development of the big reptiles that have always fascinated children and adults, especially their dramatic extinction.</span></p><p> <span><span>Once the topic was developed in detail, they were required to make a poster on scale with the information collected. It was undeniable that pictures or photographs must cover most of the poster as long as short sentences describing both biological and geological phenomena. What we were also concerned about their learning was to improve their creativity. Because of this, they were encouraged to make their own drawings.</span></span></p><p><span>Students really liked the activity, built stronger relationships between them and the final products were so amazing that were exhibited in the walls of the hallways outside their classroom.</span></p><p><span>All these events have been recorded in the rocks so geologists could unfold part of the mysteries of our History. Our teenagers discovered them an represented them for us to enjoy.</span></p>