Benefits of workshop for teachers

Swanton High School teacher Jane Anne Grindle found the OOGEEP workshop to be a help to her in the classroom. Grindle said, "This workshop gave me a broader knowledge base that I can use to create a better foundation for my teaching. I have learned new ways to make the topic of soil more interesting and understandable for my students. I have also learned a lot about the oil industry and related jobs that I had no idea existed in the Eastern and Southern parts of Ohio."

Grindle said she would definitely recommend the OOGEEP workshops to others. "I feel it has a been a great value in my professional development. It was time well spent, and the fact that you take away usable lessons, equipment and new resources is super! I feel the tours add invaluable information connecting classroom science to real jobs that we can then share with our students, making our teaching so much more authentic."

Grindle used the following Geology lessons with 11th and 12th graders in her environmental science classes.

Differentiation Of Earth’s Layers
This activity was used to help reinforce the ideas of density and that the layers of the earth are the way they are because of the density and pressure. This was a great lead-in to review the layers that they learned in middle school. The separation of the liquids and the pellets mimicked the density of the different layers, helping students understand how scientists know that these layers are here without having gone to the center of the earth.

Scaling Out Earth’s Layers
This activity reviewed previously-learned material about seismic waves and the layers of the earth. After the class created one section and added it to a bulletin board display, one student commented, “Man, there is a lot of stuff below our layer.” The students went on to gather soil from the school property, then did a layers-of-the-earth foldable.

Modeling Sedimentary Basins
This activity showed geomorphology, the way soil sediments are deposited based on the movement from their source site. This included a discussion of water patterns and movement of the lithosphere and hydrosphere. This was a good lead into the soil triangle and the kids were excited to be able to use their own soil samples.

Rocks vs Minerals
This is a good hands-on way to classify the lithosphere and a hands-on review of prior information. This helped students identify samples found in the NW Ohio area on school property and in Oak Openings Metropark. The kids liked that the boxes were neat and orderly and most importantly, labeled!