Today in science we had a very interactive lesson! As we are just starting our Earth Materials unit, I felt that the students should get right to the hands on part. Our lesson today involved dissecting "rocks." For safety and preparation reasons, we cannot actually crack open real rocks, so we used "mock rocks." These are made using the materials in our FOSS science kits and produce fairly realistic representations of rocks!
The students worked with their science partners (these are new from last quarter) to crack open the mock rocks. After the rocks were in small enough pieces, the students wrote down observations in their science lab notebooks. Once enough observations were noted by the scientists, we used some "chemicals" - salt water - to separate the mock rocks into their different components. This helped the students determine what types of rocks they were working with. I also wanted the students to start thinking like geologists, which they all succeeded with! Here is a picture of some mock rocks to give you an idea:
Next week, our class is lucky enough to have a guest speaker come to our classroom. Mr. Jones is a geologist. He will talk to the students about his job and how he impacts the world we live in. We are all really excited about his visit and will be preparing questions for Mr. Jones later this week.
If you have time, please ask your child about his or her experience with the mock rocks. The students were really excited about their findings, so I am sure they would love to share their knowledge with you!
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