Last Tuesday I spent a good amount of time washing fossils and searching my house for good rocks for show-and-tell because on Wednesday I taught geology to 6th graders! I taught Beryl Scarbrough's class at Schweitzer Elementary School in Carmichael, CA. It was a long drive to get out there but it was worth it. My main goal was to let the students know what they could do with geology and get them excited about it. I showed them pictures from places I did fieldwork (Bahamas, Texas, Antarctica) and brought rock samples to show them. I also walked them through a little paleoclimate exercise and explained to them what crinoids, bryozoa, molluscs, rugose coral, and gastropod fossils look like. I have bunches of these fossils from my paleobiology field trips while I was a student at UT, so I washed the fossils (they were still dirty from when I first collected them), picked out the best ones, and put a few of each kind in 8 bags. I divided the class up into 8 groups and had them group the fossils according to type. They did really well! I then passed around some rock samples that had the fossils in situ.
It was so much fun to teach them about geology and I think they were a great age. I tried to do some activities with 3rd graders before and that was a little hard, but the 6th graders were able to grasp everything and it was easier for me to create activities for them. A few students came up to me afterward to thank me for the presentation, and the teacher said that a bunch of students came up to her afterward to tell her how much fun it was. That makes me so happy! Maybe some of them will become geologists, and if not at least they'll have a better understanding of what you can do with geology!
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