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Getting to grips with geology

“Can you use your imagination?” says the geology guide, to a group of 10 year olds on their geography field trip. “I need you to close your eyes and cast your mind back 400 million years – days when there were no homework and no exams!”

With that and other trusted tricks, Eleri Jones has the seventeen boys from Dulwich College truly hooked looking for fossils, identifying rocks and figuring out their uses. The hour-long geology time trail started down by a stream, where Eleri invited the boys to select a pebble. And from the pebble’s characteristics – shape, texture, colour and weight – the boys are introduced to the different rock types.

“380 million years ago this area was like a desert,” explains Eleri, a teacher turned Education Officer with the Brecon Beacons National Park. “The sand from the desert was eroded away, washed down to the bottom of the stream and it made the red sandstone that lies beneath us.“ Geology sounds so simple when explained like that. “Look boys,” says Eleri. “The sand comes off when you rub it. It is so soft you can carve it into shapes,” like the two Welsh dragons that are looking down from a rooftop.

As they climb up the hill the boys build up an idea of the underlying geology and how it shaped the area around them. “Each step represents one million years,” continues Eleri. “Let’s count 20 million years and see what we find.” The group walk on excitedly, halting beside a paler coloured outcrop that they correctly identify as limestone. “Its fissures allow water to run through it,” explains Eleri. “It is used for whitewashing many of the houses in the area.”

We are in the western end of the National Park, where Fforest Fawr (‘Great Forest’) is promoting its new UNESCO ‘Geopark’ status – the fifth in the UK and a proud first for Wales. The aim of Geopark initiative, which dates from 1999, is to protect and promote unique geological sites to wider audiences through sustainable tourism and education. Those in the UK (see below) are located within National Parks or Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty - apart from Abberley and Malvern Hills, which does at least have the advantage of a more central location.

Here in the Brecon Beacons they have been running educational courses for schools for years, be they from Swansea Valley or South London. The courses link in particular into Key Stage Two – geography, science, art and PSHE. But spurred on by their new status, they are expanding into Key Stage One with a course on investigating woodland habitats.

As well as their geology time trail, Fforest Fawr also organise a geological fortnight for schools (with free local transport) and provide rock trails for investigating the area’s historical cultural sites, such as the limestone that makes up Carreg Castle and the red cairn sandstone that surrounds Garn Goch Hill Fort.

But you don’t always have to visit the Geoparks to profit from the diversity of what they have to offer. The North Pennines, for example, has 20 rock boxes it loans schools, with activities to go with them. And it provides field-based worksheets for children to visit and learn from some of their own special landscapes: Upper Teesdale, whose artic alpine flora is unique to England; High Force, which is England’s biggest waterfall; and the karst limestone scenery around ‘God’s Bridge’.

And from next academic year, Marble Arch Caves Geopark, in Northern Ireland, will be offering many of its activities through its web site, that all link neatly into their curriculum. They include guided walks for Key Stage 1 upwards, that involve children imagining themselves as ‘Fuzzy the Squirrel’ and going on a ‘Mini Beast Hunt’, right up to role playing a Public Inquiry on the future of the area’s Blanket Bog.

In North West Scotland things are best developed at Knockan Crag, 13 miles north of Ullapool, where worksheets, CD-ROMs and an on-screen quiz can entertain schools visits – with teachers notes on their web site. And at different times of the year the Geopark run opportunities for children to make fossils, learn about cave paintings and go panning for gold.

But particularly popular has been an intriguing sounding ‘mountain experiment box’, leant by the British Geological Survey. You fill it up with different coloured soils, and the machine can then demonstrate what happens to rock layers under pressure from the earth’s core. “It’s very visual. Children love it, even the small kids, not just those doing geology,” says Isobel MacPhail, the Scottish Geopark Officer. (I am told you can demonstrate the same thing, pretty well, with a sandwich!)

“Geology is not an easy subject to teach,” admits Helen Kahn, the accompanying teacher from Dulwich College. “But is amazing what the children take in when they see it for themselves.”

UK Geoparks

• Abberley and Malvern Hills, Worcestershire/Shropshire/Gloucestershire/Herefordshire www.worc.ac.uk 01905 855185
• Fforest Fawr, Powys www.breconbeacons.org 01874 624437
• Marble Arch Caves & Cuilcagh Mountain Park, Fermanagh, Northern Ireland www.marblearchcaves.net 02866 348855
• North Pennines, Durham www.northpennines.org.uk 01388 528801
• North West Highlands, Wester Ross and North West Sutherland, Scotland www.northwest-highlands-geopark.org.uk 01571 844000

 

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