Teaching geosciences in primary school: an efficient training

The school has a main target: to ensure the success of all students. This ambitious goal may be pursued through individual curricula designed on the basis of the needs and attitudes of the students. This is the inclination of modern school, which tries also to offer a wide spectrum of learning activities. Teaching geosciences in primary school ensures a direct scientific approach to the objects of study. Teachers will treat communication with both educative and scientific aims. They will therefore not only present science topics from a theoretical point of view, but will also offer practical activities, that will be performed also out of school, for example during field trips. Lectures will occur at the same time with laboratories, and students will experience concrete activities with a mutual interaction between groups and with teachers. The involvement of young students in the observation of nature is aimed at steering them to a virtuous and conscious behaviour for the respect of the environment. This will contribute to the development of an environmental awareness, which will contribute later, when they will be adults, to the preservation of natural ecosystems. In the present work, we show some teaching experiences, which take advantage from the observation of the objects and reality to shed light on ideas and concepts developed directly by the young students. The students will learn about natural phenomena through the observation of nature and will play with the objects of nature. Natural environments will be perfect laboratories to play and encourage interest and curiosity avoiding passive learning, where students are always unwilling recipients of knowledge. Students will make their own discoveries that will be their best reward.