My Science Box

Getting Ready

1. Get permission from CalTrans to take your students to the site. The contact person is Brigetta Smith, CalTrans Public Information Officer, 510-286-5820, [email protected]
2. You may wish to take the directions detailed in the lesson plan below and print them out as a checklist/handout for the students to carry with them as they complete their observations at the tunnel. I had my students write the general directions in their lab notebooks before departing from the classroom but then realized that many would have benefited from a more detailed checklist.
3. Each student needs a ruler. Bring a class set or make sure each student brings their own.
4. Optional: prepare rock study kits to take to the field with hand lenses and hardness testing equipment.
5. Lay down a strip of masking tape along the wall or the edge of the board as a timeline showing the sequence of events in the formation of the rock layers at the Caldecott Tunnel. The tape should be about 1 foot long for every 2 students in your class.