Trial lessons about the formation of and changes to the Earth were conducted in the 7th grade at a junior high school. The objectives of this study were to ascertain the degree of understanding of earthquakes and see if there was an improvement in consciousness with respect to disaster risk reduction. In a post-lesson questionnaire survey, students were asked to think about what disasters could threaten them and how they would deal with disasters if they occurred in their locality after they studied the characteristic of seismic waves, the mechanism of earthquakes and other such matters. The results of questionnaires showed: 1) The contents that the students understood well in trial lessons were: “disaster damage” and “the way in which seismic waves travel.” 2) The contents that the students did not understand well were: “traveling speed,” “the vibrations of seismic waves” and “plate.” 3) The trail lessons proved to be quite effective not only with respect to the students gaining an understanding of the distributions of seismic intensity and hypocenters, and the types of disasters that have occurred in their localities, but also in the motivation that students told about earthquakes in their family. 4) It is currently impractical to incorporate the contents of disaster risk reduction education in the science unit about earthquakes. More lesson time for disaster risk reduction education to link with science lessons is needed.

Tokyo Metropolitan Kunitachi Senior High School, where I worked as a part-time teacher, has a Nikon 15-cm refractor telescope on an equatorial mount on the roof. On one occasion, I instructed the students of the Earth Science Club and conducted sun surface observation with them. From analyzing the observation sketches from 2013 to 2016(excluding 2012 as the first and trial year), this paper considers education tools that can be used for high school education. Based on this observation data, the paper reports on the following three points:

(1) Changes in the number of sunspot groups by hemisphere

(2) Changes in the latitude of sunspot groups

(3) Calculation of rotation cycle based on sunspots

We analyzed the descriptions on igneous rocks in all the Japanese junior high school science textbooks, and examined answers for the academic achievement test on igneous rock textures from the aspect of the research question: “Do university first-year students and high school students diachronically comprehend igneous rocks as a result of igneous activity?” The results showed that more than forty percent of the respondents understood the relation between igneous rocks textures and petrogenetic classification; however, only around two percent noted the flow of magma. In terms of understanding igneous rock textures diachronically, although respondents were able to capture the main feature of the subject, they did not fully absorb the temporal aspect of it. It is hoped that this study will improve teaching content by viewing igneous rock textures from a standpoint of diachronic thinking even in junior high school science classes.

This paper discusses answers to the question “Are Grains of 2 mm in Diameter Gravel or Sand?” Geologists and sedimentologists examine the grain sizes of sediments and sedimentary rocks to classify them into gravel (conglomerates), sand (sandstone), or mud (mudstone), and it would not be a problem as to whether grains of 2 mm in diameter should be called gravel or sand. Grains are usually irregular in shape, and grains of just 2 mm in diameter with a perfectly spherical do not exist in nature. Grains around 2 mm in diameter can be classified into: gravel larger than 2 mm in diameter, or sand smaller than 2 mm in diameter in geological and sedimentological studies.