Science and Math Workshops

Integrated Global Sciences Teacher Training

For Middle School and High School Science Teachers

Two rich topic areas, GLOBE Seasons and Biomes Project and Faults in the Earth System, add up to a week of exciting learning and new ideas for student activities in your classroom. Learn topics that can be integrated into any content area to increase student understanding of their world. Workshop topics are interdisciplinary and designed for middle school to high school teachers in a range of content areas. The trainings provide teachers and students with opportunities to be involved with research, scientists, and data to enrich students' science experience.

GLOBE Seasons and Biomes Project

The GLOBE Seasons and Biomes Project is an inquiry-based project supporting student investigation into seasons and changes in climate. It connects students, teachers, and local communities with educators and scientists.

Teachers will:

Learn how to monitor their own seasons through fieldwork using GLOBE protocols
Compare with the changes recently so pronounced in Tundra and Taiga biomes in the Earth's polar regions
Become involved in science web casts
Learn more about biogeography, climate change, remote sensing, and phenology

This training represents a new direction for the GLOBE program. Previously trained GLOBE teachers as well as teachers new to the GLOBE program are welcome.

Faults in the Earth System

Science content focus: Faults, mountain building, solid-earth science, scientific modeling, plate tectonics

This intensive workshop will introduce teachers to an innovative classroom tool, the research sandbox, for modeling the growth of geologic fault systems and the formation of mountains. Dr. Michele Cooke, from the Geosciences Department at the University of Massachusetts, will:

Lead teachers in understanding her research on fault system evolution and tectonic plate movements
Show teachers how to use guided field trips to help students understand local geology using fault and earthquake visualizations and data in the classroom and physically modeling Earth surface processes in a specially constructed sandbox
Use the sandbox activities to show how to provide opportunities for students to observe, measure, analyze, and hypothesize about the geologic processes of mountain building

During the school year following the program, participating teachers and their students will be encouraged to collaborate with Cooke and participate in her research on fault system evolution.