Site Guide: K-12 Teachers

There are a variety of resources available through SERC websites aimed at the K-12 teacher community. Several groups have developed extensive collections of teaching activities at various educational levels. There are also opportunities for professional development available to teachers who teach Earth science.

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Teaching Activities

Earth Exploration Toolbook - The Earth Exploration Toolbook is a collection of computer-based Earth science activities. Each activity, or chapter, introduces one or more data sets and an analysis tool that enables users to explore some aspect of the Earth system. These chapters give step-by-step instructions to enable teachers to introduce real data sets and tools into the classroom.

EarthLabs: A National Model for Earth Science Lab Courses - This project has developed 4 online units for a high school Earth science lab course that is scientifically reigorous and quantitative in order to address the perception of high school Earth science as being "not a real science" compared to biology, chemistry, and physics. The units cover Corals, Drought, Fisheries, and Hurricanes and consist of online and laboratory experiments, reading appropriate primary literature, and conducting web research.

MnSTEP Teaching Activity Collection - The activities in this collection are submissions written by teachers who participated in one of the summer workshops on science content and pedagogy conducted by the Minnesota Science Teachers Education Project. The activities reflect individual integration plans for applying new-found content knowledge and inquiry strategies directly in classroom curriculum and practice. The collection currently consists of more than 500 activities in math and science at all levels of K-12 education.

Microbial Life - Educational Resources: Resources for K-12 Teachers and Students - Explore the amazing world of microbes using WebQuest guided discovery exercises. For teachers, discover a wealth of related resources, teaching strategies, and activities that have been developed by collaborating projects.

Enduring Resources for Earth Science Education (ERESE): ERESE is a project promotes, creates and publishes educational resources in a collaboration between middle and high school teachers and Earth scientists. They have made some of these resources available through a collaboration with the Pedagogy in Action project.

Math You Need - The Math You Need, When You Need It modules cover quantitative topics that are important in introductory geoscience courses. Each topic includes a page for the instructor, quantitative information for the students, a set of practice problems and culminates in an on-line quiz that is automatically graded and submitted to the instructor. The project is designed to give students the quantitative knowledgethat they need, just before they need to use it in their concurrent geoscience course. This program includes pre- and post-testing and self-paced modules.

Professional Development Resources

National Association of Geoscience Teachers - NAGT is a professional society for earth science educators at all levels. The organization maintains robust regional sections where educators gather to share ideas and materials. There are also a number of award and professional development programs open to K-12 educators. NAGT also publishes the Journal of Geoscience Education, one of the premier publications in geoscience education.

Preparing Teachers to Teach Earth Science: Professional Development Programs - This program, developed under the DLESE Community Services project, has profiled a number of programs across the country where k-12 teachers can engage in professional development and continuing education.