Earth & Environmental Science - Kent Street High School
Getting up close to an Archaen rock and touring a wind farm made science come alive for students from Kent Street Senior High School recently.
Fourteen students from the school recently visited Dongara and Eneabba as part of a field trip for the new Earth and Environmental Science course.
Teacher Suzy Urbaniak said the course was popular with students and the practical activities undertaken during the field trip reinforced students’ enjoyment of the discipline.
Kent St SHS Earth & Environmental Science students in front of the open pit at Luzenac's Three Springs talc mine. (back row, left to right) Abigail May, Ross Smith, Taylor Jones, Adam Vilaca, Pat Nicelescu, Josh Stowers, Daniel Gardiner. (front row, left to right) Elizabeth Kipma, Nicole Brown, Yasinta Situmorang, Suzy Urbaniak (teacher), Daniel Barrowclough, Zac Price, Fred Schaffer (teacher) and Jordan Quan.
Students complete the questions in their field trip manual by analysing stromatolites at Lake Thetis, Cervantes.
“Students love the investigation tasks because they are relevant to their lives,” she said.
“For example, when a student recently commented that he now understood why he had a sandy backyard at home, it reinforced what the student had learnt about the Perth Basin and highlighted the practical nature of the course.
“The knowledge students gain in this course will help them consider important environmental issues as they get older.”
Ms Urbaniak said that follow-up tasks in the school laboratory included building a groundwater system and examining how caves are formed.
She said the new course is not as abstract as the previous Geology course and it provides teachers with the freedom to contextually set it.
“In Geology there was very little time for practical, hands-on science, so students found it very dry.”
Ms Urbaniak said the school’s recent field trip had motivated her students, particularly because it had included mine tours to Luzenac’s Three Springs talc mine and Iluka’s Eneabba mineral sands mine.
“At Watheroo, students examined the Archaen Namban granite, of the Yilgarn Craton. The weathering profile was analysed and the students began to develop an understanding of how it — and other rocks of the Yilgarn Craton — became the source of sediments which later in geological time formed the sedimentary sequences of the Perth Basin,” she said.
“During a tour of Luzenac’s Three Springs mine, students were captivated by the talc, dolomite and late proterozoic stromatolite fossil specimens that were collected off the dumps.
“Another highlight for students was a visit to the Alinta windfarm, where 78m high windmills rotate at 220km/h.”
Ms Urbaniak said three of her students were already interested in tertiary studies in the field of geo-science. Some students are interested in double degrees in geo-science and economics/finance.
The Curriculum Council’s Earth and Environmental Science course accreditation and review officer, Bernie Hunneybun, said she had received a lot of positive feedback about the new course.
“Teachers are receiving lots of practical support material on a regular basis. This includes lab activities and worksheets on difficult conceptual topics through a joint funding project between Earth Science WA and the Curriculum Council,” she said.
“The course is also supported by an email teacher network so they can get advice and support from each other on a day-to-day basis.”
Ms Hunneybun said field-based experiences are an important part of studying a field science. Enhancement of higher-order cognitive skills, refinement of observation and inquiry skills and increased self-confidence are all cultivated during field trips.
She said well-organised field trips, whether short or long, replicate good science.
“The methodology of science can only be learned through action: asking questions about nature; creating methods for answering those questions; implementing methodology; evaluating answers; and communicating the findings to others.
“Field trips illustrate how these steps occur more readily than going through a series of laboratory exercises which simply verify something that is already known,” said Ms Hunneybun.
