Earth Science in the secondary school: lesson plan, strategies and tools

In the high school environment -and not only- any education project to be highly productive must be related to learning strategies. For the students that is fundamental to improve interest in the matter, to make easier the comprehension and the assimilation of concepts, processes and phenomena throughout the relation between cause and effect, and, besides, to whet the memorisation, able to foster conceptual links. Strategies are enforced using peculiar tools -instruments and materials- both indoor and on the field. Together with the classical tools as microscope, chemical reagents, rock samples, maps and so on, there are a lot of modern opportunities offered by media. By this way, at present it is very easy to find 3D images and dynamic representations of natural processes. Besides, the computer and internet connection give the best opportunity to realize and produce by oneself -teachers and students co-operating- educational models and experiments. However, strategies and tools are decidedly inadequate when used without a carefully-considered lesson plan. As concerns the Earth Science it is basic to arrange the several main arguments (Earth interiors, plate tectonics, minerals and rocks, habitat and environment, life’s and atmosphere evolution, transport and deposition, earthquakes, mountain building, volcanoes, surface modelling, the water role, risk and resource management, and so on) in a organised tree with hierarchical structuring. This contribution proposes and discusses a potential and new Earth Science lesson plan, taking into account the ways to convey some of the contents, by the use of modern tools and materials, just to increase the students’ interest for the matter.