Margaret M. Loos
After introducing the students to some image producing pictures on the formation of the earth, such as
The Earth Is Born
, available at the Peabody Museum or the National Geographic’s film on the formation of Surtsey, I would ask them to mentally create an image of a featureless meeting of sea, sky and earth. Then,
on site at Lighthouse Point
, I would ask them to erase for a time those features of the harbor that man has effected. Perhaps they could picture themselves as being on the first ship from the Old World to enter the natural harbor. By setting periods for silent “meditation” and individual observation, I would allow students to write down any questions they might like to answer for themselves or others about the large physical features of the landscape as they look into the harbor, or even the smallest observable features of the beach itself.
By developing the students’ observational powers by these visits and by taking slides for a student-teacher produced slideshow, I hope to acquaint them with the constructive and destructive forces in operation now and in earlier times in our area. The features present in our locations, such as cliffs, beaches, marshes, and feeding rivers will be examined to uncover the possible explanations for their formation and to expand to the greater features of the Sound, Long Island, the Continental Shelf and continental and ocean plate actions. The effects of moving water will be emphasized. The variety of coastal features will enable us to relate them to maps, making map study and mathematic exercises based on map study more realistic. Several printings of maps of this section of Connecticut and of the harbor will disclose the changes on the harbor’s borders effected by geologic processes or by man’s use of those borders. The different usage of the land at the water’s edge by private owners and the municipality, such as recreation, industry, transportation, and other pursuits will be discussed throughout the classes. Students will be asked to examine their own and the public’s attitudes toward those choices.
Of course, in order to understand the concepts of the earlier formative periods in the harbor’s history, bedrock geology will be studied. The recent activities of the volcanoes in Hawaii and Mt. St. Helens have been presented in magnificent filming and photographs for classroom displays. These demonstrate that the earth is eternally primitive. In order to clarify the building of the Iayers of the earth we will go from the lava of the volcanoes to the rock cycle, examining examples of local igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic rock on our sites and develop a collection of these to add to the teachers demonstration collection. Glaciation effects will be examined in depth. The economic usage and environmental implications of our local rock formations will present up-to-date aspects of bedrock geology.
These are the strategies I believe I can use to explore and make more relative the study of geology for my eighth grade students. As much as possible each of these phases will originate in the observable and tangible and expand to develop vocabularies, concepts, activities and
imagination
with the goal of producing understanding of the past’s influence, the present’s impact and, hopefully, to lead to some skills for dealing with the future of the harbor’s environment.