Geology+Learning+Experience+1


 * Rocks and Minerals, Learning Experience 1**

Materials: Trays with names on Trowels Ziplock bags per pair with names on plastic spoons

Day 1:

Learning targets:
 * I can sort ground materials into what are rocks, what are not rocks, and what we are not sure about.
 * I can reason about what rocks are. This means I can talk about my ideas about what makes something a rock.


 * 1) intro geology: study of what makes up the ground, what the ground is made of
 * 2) what do you know about the ground? About geology?
 * 3) List as a group what they think we might find on the ground outside.
 * 4) Go over collecting rules: nothing alive, no dead animals or insects, nothing attached to the ground, no flowers -- you might collect rocks, pieces of plastic, dead plants, dirt, sand, anything you find on the ground.
 * 5) Use bags to collect in pairs
 * 6) You can only take things that fit in your bag (no big sticks)
 * 7) Warn them about putting too many heavy things in their bags -- they can break
 * 8) Go over boundaries and circling up
 * 9) Collect ground materials
 * 10) Inside, show them how to pour their bag on a tray and begin to sort it. Show them labels and markers if they want to label anything.
 * 11) They sort what they have found into different piles and label them (if they want to). Ask why they put things together, what they were thinking about. (Begin to collect words they use to describe properties of rocks -- shape, size, color, texture)
 * 12) Some sharing: discoveries, questions. What do you wonder about the earth or the ground? (Jot these down on index cards?)

Day 2

Learning Targets: § I can observe and describe properties of rocks. This means I can explain how they look and feel. § I can compare and contrast rocks. This means I can describe ways rocks are the same and different from each other. § I can explain why ground materials might be rocks and might not be rocks.

i. Why did you put that there? How do you know it’s a rock? ii. How do you know it’s not a rock? Where does it come from? What is it made of? iii. Make a list on the board of what rocks are (for example, they are hard, they come from the ground, they are not made by people, they are not alive, they do not come from trees, they are not wooden…) generated from the sorting as a class 4. Make a class chart of How Do You Know Something Is a Rock? (Maybe do this as a Science Talk where kids pass a bean bag to speak, and respond to each others' ideas.)
 * 1) Self-assessment using sticky dots of long-term targets for geology.
 * 2) Whole-group discussion: what do you know about rocks? What is a rock? Where do they come from? How would you describe a rock to someone who has never seen one? (like an alien from another planet)
 * 3) As a class, sort their trays into rocks, not rocks, and things we’re not sure of. Have pre-labeled trays for this. Discuss how we know which are rocks. Pairs pick things out of their bags and place them on trays.
 * 4) Questions to ask:

Day 3:

In groups of 3, work on posters for each ground material. (rocks, gravel, sand, water, soil, shells, mud). Their job is to show on the poster where they think the ground material came from.

Give the groups a talking stone. They discuss with each other and agree what they will put on the poster.

Model how to disagree / agree about what goes on the poster.

You can put different ideas on the poster -- you just need to plan it out.

Give them a piece of paper to jot down what ideas they want to put on the poster and who will be in charge of those ideas. They need to agree on that before they get the poster.

Then they draw and write on the poster. This is a good pre-assessment of where they think things come from.

Also continue the discussion of what ground materials are rocks and which are not rocks. Finish sorting them.