It's Sedimentary My Dear Watson...

This week Tracey and I taught Lesson 2 of our Rocks and Minerals Unit and the focus was on the 3 types of rocks; igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary, as well as the rock cycle. Tracey and I had done a lot of preparation for this lesson and I found I needed to do a lot of research on the topic before I would be able to confidently distinguish the 3 types of rocks myself, let alone show the students how to do it. I found some great sites- The University of Missouri E-themes on Rocks and Minerals lists sites that provide credible info and fun activities for the unit, and The Geological Society had a wonderful interactive rock cycle and descriptions and uses of each of the 12 rocks we'd be using in class! I found these sites to be extremely informative and valuable while planning our lesson as well.

We began our lesson with the students on the rug and reviewed the 3 types of rocks; igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic. Fortunately our class teacher had already gone over these, but we were to introduce the concept of the rock cycle. Before we began our lesson the teacher reminded us to be very clear, concise, explicit, and to model the behaviors that we wanted the students to exhibit. She also said that because these were new concepts, not to bog students down with superfluous vocab, but instead to give them the main ideas. This was great advice, but it caused me a bit of panic when I realized my Rock Cycle poster was laden with words like "crystalline, foliated, intrusive, extrusive" etc. Luckily Tracey and I had time to reword our explanations into terms that the students would be more familiar with (like crystal vs. crystalline, or layered instead of foliated) and also to help them to make make connections with the new vocab (metamorphic) and concepts they already know (morph means to change like a butterfly transforms). I also got some fabulous ideas from another great website to show students how metamorphic rocks form from heat and pressure by having the students rub their hands together (and feel the heat) and push the hands together (to feel the heat and pressure). After consulting with the classroom teacher, I think next time we would introduce the rock cycle at the end of the lesson and not right after talking about the 3 types of rock-- it may have been a bit too much instruction all at once.

Because our lesson last week went over-time, this week we were very careful about our time-management, which included time spent on managing materials. Upon our classroom teacher's suggestion, we decided to "pre-assemble" our student's trays with the rocks that they would be using for the lesson as well as the hand lenses and calling students up a pair at a time to retrieve materials, so that valuable learning time wouldn't be wasted with students choosing the "prettiest rock" out of the bin. We also found that giving students time reminders during the activity so they knew how far along they should be (half-way, almost finished, 2 more minutes) were helpful for them and us.

Although the unit lesson did not explicitly cover the frameworks, we made sure to include the rock cycle and how rocks form in our lesson. Ben mentioned that students thought rocks could be fabricated, and that was a common misconception in our class as well and I'd like to revisit that point again when we discuss what the students have learned about rocks so far at the beginning of our next lesson.

A few other things worth mentioning are that I was really impressed with how well the students worked together in pairs and observed the rocks and then classified them- it was so great to see them talking like little geologists! We had also listed the major properties of each type of rock on the board and I think that was a huge help to the students, because otherwise I think they were overloaded with new information.

Another great moment was when a student came up to us after class to show us the geode she had brought in and explained to us how exciting it was for her to have found it! This was especially uplifting since at the beginning of our lesson when we asked of students were ready to look at rocks again, I heard a couple students say "no!" I'm sure when they see the dozen shiny and colorful minerals we have lined up for next week's lesson, they will be less lackluster!