Earth and Physical Sciences Guides

Overview

Integrating earth science into your existing biology-based teaching practice can feel somewhat intimidating. To help you understand the important connections to earth science in the MBER Living Earth resources, we've created a handful of brief "just-in-time" earth science guides. Please read the descriptions below and then scroll to the bottom of the page to download each guide. We refer to these guides at multiple points, but of course they are most needed in the midst of the earth science units.

In addition to these guides, we highly recommend reading up on the larger story. Prior to developing these resources, for example, our team (mostly biology-focused researchers and experts, with only a couple of earth science-focused educators) decided to read Robert Hazen's 2012 book, The Story of Earth (Penguin Books, available at other retail stores). Hazen not only carries the reader through the 4.5+ billion year history of the planet, he creates a picture of an evolving Earth where non-living and living components influence one another. The story of life on Earth, therefore, is also the story of rocks and water and our atmosphere. A great read. Developing not only your targeted content knowledge, but also this larger paradigm of an evolving planet (not just an evolving biosphere) will allow you to more powerfully leverage ideas across the curricular units and to help students make both connections among models and to develop an "earth systems" understanding of our wonderful and unique planet.