EDSE 452/453 Amber Hayward

Science Activity

Curriculum Fit: 1) New Science 7 Unit E: The Planet Earth

2) Old Science 8 Unit 5: The Earth’s Crust

3) Science 20 Unit 2: The Changing Earth

Activity:

1) Rock – cookie analogy. Take a cookie preferably chocolate chip and ask your students to identify what some traits of that cookie. I.e. how big is it, what color, etc. Write them out as they supply them. Next ask the students to tell you what the cookie is made up of. Get them to name off at least 2 ingredients & write this down below the first observations.

Next get your students to examine a rock sample. Order the questions so that the students provide you with similar information i.e. large, hard, brown. Write these observations beside the observations they made about the cookie. Then ask them what rocks are made of. Record their responses again.

Finally ask them how cookies & rocks are the same and reiterate this in the form: if cookies are made of ingredients then rocks are made of minerals.

2) The second activity suggested was taken from an article entitled Color Me Metamorphic by Donald Birrd. The first lab relates to the breakdown of rocks through physical, chemical, and biological weathering. Students weather different colored crayons onto waxed paper using pencil sharpeners. This makes it easier for them to investigate why rocks weather at different rates depending on much of the rock surface is exposed, how the strength of the force being exerted can change the amount of weathering & how the rock surface weathers, etc. This lab leads into 2 – 3 other labs using the original material the students weathered to make metamorphic and sedimentary rock samples. This is an excellent series of labs that uses simple, economical materials that are fun and appealing to students and help to make the abstract concepts of geology come alive.