(Zaragoza. Friday, June 24, 2022). A teaching innovation project (PIIDUZ_1_300) of the University of Zaragoza has allowed science teaching to be worked on from an interdisciplinary perspective in which students of Fine Arts from the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences of Teruel have participated, who have designed six scenes based on the geological resources of an area in the province of Teruel, specifically the Sierra de Castelfrio and the Alfambra river valley. The students (30 in the design phase, and 4 responsible for the final proposal) have been working on the subject “Project Methodology – Image” with scenes that represent the world from the time when all the continents were united, going through the dinosaurs, the mammalian sites of Teruel and reaching the present day. The mural had to have the following characteristics: to be attractive to the general public, especially to the potential public of Early Childhood and Primary Education, to show scenes from the geological past, to teach the variation of the continents, to teach the passage of geological time, to teach the tectonic movements and vocabulary such as Alpine Orogeny. All this in a didactic way that would allow the public to ask themselves questions and look for the answers in the mural itself.
These images, once created, were used in a second phase of the project, by the students of the Teaching degree (Primary and Early Childhood Education Degree) to work on didactic proposals during the second part of the academic year in science subjects together with material resources. like the surrounding rocks that represent those scenes.
Then, in the last month of the course, these activities proposed by the teaching students have been implemented. Its effectiveness has been tested in a school in Teruel (CEIP La Fuenfresca). In this way, some 250 primary and infant boys and girls were working on the activity for a week and learning about the rocks of Teruel and its landscapes.
The final part of the project, which is being presented this afternoon, has been to implement the scenes on a 30 x 3 meter wall in the town of Peralejos, next to the Nature Interpretation Center of Peralejos and the Sierra de Castelfrio. Entitled “The Mural of Geological Time”, it has been possible thanks to the economic subsidy of the Antonio Gargallo University Foundation and the Peralejos City Council. This has generated a new resource for the town, which, based on the six scenes, fulfills the role of transferring to society in general and to the rural world in particular a didactic and striking explanation of the heritage and geological resources of the environment, putting in value and teaching the importance of the landscapes that surround us. The six scenes based on the rocks represent the Triassic (with footprints of reptile ancestors of the dinosaurs), the oceanic Jurassic (with fossil invertebrates), the Continental Jurassic (the geological formation where the dinosaurs are found in Teruel), the Alpine Orogeny ( the rocks represent the collision of the African plate with the European one), the “African” Savannah (with the mammalian deposits of the Turolian) and the present day represented by an Iberian settlement.
The mural has been directed by professors Rafael Royo Torres and Alfonso Burgos Risco from the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences of Teruel. The design of the mural was made by students of Fine Arts. The teachers responsible for the PIIDUZ_1_300 teaching innovation project are Rafael Royo Torres, Alfonso Burgos Risco, Adrián Ponz Miranda, Beatriz Carrasquer, José Carrasquer and María Victoria Alvarez.
The work will be inaugurated and presented in the town of Peralejos (Teruel) today, Friday, June 24 at 7:00 p.m. by the Dean of the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences of Teruel, the Director of the Antonio Gargallo University Foundation, representative of the Provincial Council of Teruel and the mayor of the town. Later there will be a Spanish wine for the attendees.
