And for the finale, let's play "Name that mineral!"

For our final lesson in the rocks and minerals unit, our classroom teacher suggested that we do lesson 14, which is mineral identification. So the students received 12 cards, 1 for each of the minerals, containing information collected by a geologist and they were to match this information to their own observations (done during each lesson- streak, color, luster, etc) to identify the minerals. My partner Tracey did a great job as usual explaining the lesson in her blog post, so I'll just try to add to what she has already summarized.

I was really impressed with how far the students have come in terms of knowing what to do, following directions, and being active and engaged in the lesson. During the first lesson, a lot of time was spent just getting materials and guiding students through each step of the lesson (using the chimes). Now the students know exactly what to do, they put their gloves right on and get down to work and work so nicely together in their groups sharing ideas and observations (we rarely had to use the chimes). I was also really impressed with the different strategies students used to try to identify the minerals (some students laid all the cards out on one desk so they could see them all at once, instead of shuffling through them), and how well the pairs worked together to make the the identifications. Even Tracey and I thought it was pretty difficult to make the identifications based on the Identification Cards, but the students did great! Although not every student finished and none of them had identified all the minerals correctly, they did have a lot of them correct (like sulfur and Muscovite) and their wrong answers were minerals that were very similar to one another (like magnetite and hematite).















We kept our intro brief, but we still needed more time for the mineral identification than we expected and we only had time to read the correct answers and not really go over the student's reasoning behind their choices, which we would have liked to do. Going from group to group though during the lesson, gave me a good idea of how students were making their decisions and Tracey and I would give them tips and strategies to help them use deductive reasoning to make the right choices. Overall, I felt it was a great final lesson and a great way to see what the students had learned over the course of the unit!

The best part of the lesson, by far, was when we were presented with a book for each of us made by the students with all they had learned and what they liked about us and our lessons! The students had each drawn a picture and written "The most important thing about Ms. Ross is ..." It was a great way to see what the students had learned and what they felt were our best attributes as teachers. Most students wrote that we were really helpful and taught them a lot, but one student wrote that the most important thing about me is that I have long hair lol! I guess to that fourth grader that is the most important thing! I'm going to miss those little kiddos!!