Workshops

Take part in a fossil hunt in your school, with our expert palaeontologists. What did these strange creatures look like when they were alive? Where did they live? What did they eat? This fun and informative workshop is for years 3 to 6 and only for schools in the Leeds area.

Please contact Jane Dickinson Lead Outreach Officer for Environment for further details and to book.

Suitable for KS2 pupils. Duration 1 hour. Up to 30 pupils per session.

Learn the techniques of earthquake location using real data from a seismic monitoring network in Turkey deployed as part of a research project led by Leeds University. We will use P and S-waves and you will pick the arrival times at the seismograms. From the difference in travel times of these waves you can obtain the source location of the earthquake. We bring all the materials – you just need to provide pencils, rulers and pairs of compasses.

Please contact Jane Dickinson Lead Outreach Officer for Environment for further details.

Suitable for KS4 and KS5 pupils. Duration 60-90 minutes. Up to 30 pupils per session.

Our popular ‘Leeds Rocks’ petrology practical in our state of the art Earth Visualization Laboratory is an interactive workshop tackles parts of the A level syllabus which can be difficult to cover in a classroom. The students learn the basic skills of thin section analysis using our dedicated microscope teaching suite. Group sizes can be from 1 to 96 students. A simpler version of this workshop is also available for KS3 and 4.

Please contact Jane Dickinson Lead Outreach Officer for Environment for further details.

Suitable for KS3 and KS4 pupils. Duration 1 hour. 

Enthusiastic university students are great role models. If you’d like to help your students make sense of the many degree options available to students interested in Geography, Geology, Environmental and Climate Science or Sustainability, why not invite one of our student ambassadors to come and speak with them face-to-face? Our specially trained student ambassadors talk about their experience at university, and why they chose to study their subject.

Please contact Jane Dickinson Lead Outreach Officer for Environment for further details.

Suitable for KS3 – KS5 pupils.  Duration 40 minutes. 

There is also the option to have greater input from final year undergraduates by offering a placement to a student on one of the ‘Into Schools’ modules. The placement student would spend from 20 to 60 hours in the classroom, and develop and deliver learning resources with your guidance.

For more information contact the module managers:

• ‘Geographers into Teaching’ module – contact Owen Radford-Lloyd
• ‘Earth and Environmental Sciences into Schools’ – contact Phil Murphy

This presentation gives an overview how active volcanoes are monitored with modern geophysical methods, and how volcanologists interpret the data in terms of volcanic processes. You will see several examples from Soufrière Hills volcano in Montserrat, West Indies, and even listen to volcanic tremors.

You will learn how researchers at Leeds University use these results to inform the Government about the state of volcanic activity and how they are able to warn the people of Montserrat about imminent eruptive activity.

Please contact Jane Dickinson Lead Outreach Officer for Environment for further details

Suitable for KS4 and KS5 students, duration 1 hour.