The key role of practical activities in geoscience education.

In the school curriculum of French children, 1/3 of the programs of the « Life and Earth Sciences” (SVT) are devoted to geosciences. Considered as a societal issue, geosciences are at the heart of high school programs, whether this teaching is chosen by students as a specialty or not. The public affected is therefore very wide and heterogeneous.

The practical approach, particularly through modelling, simulation or direct observation is a crucial lever to help all students grasp sometimes complicated concepts.

Geosciences combine entities of volume, time and space at very different scales : from the crystalline mesh to the entire orogen, from the limestone to the foraminiferous, from the duration of a varve to that of eons ; scales with which it is necessary to be able to juggle.

We propose here different practical activities carried out by our high school students that make it possible to make the Earth Sciences concrete and tangible. In addition, these activities that value multiple skills allow students to discover the richness of geoscience disciplines  and the different professions related to it.