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Earth / Space Science Kit Resources Vancouver School District
Students often come to the Rocks and Minerals Kit with a collection of rocks and a fascination for the colors, sizes, and textures of rocks. In kindergarten students study that solid rocks, soils, and water are earth materials. In fourth grade students use the Land and Water Kit to find that landforms are the result of a combination of constructive and destructive forces. In future earth science instruction they examine how physical weathering and chemical weathering break rocks into fragments. The Rocks Kit is a perfect foundation for the in-depth study of rocks and minerals in earth science in later grades. Students experiencing investigations through Rocks and Minerals will have a rich foundation for later study of earth science including Land and Water in fourth grade, and ecosystems in fifth grade. The second grade Changes kit will also help build a foundation for properties of matter in third grade, an area of study which is addressed through the rocks and minerals kit. By observing various properties associated to Rocks and Minerals,
you'll help students begin to understand the diversity of physical
and chemical properties in nature of earth materials. With the
activities in Rocks and Minerals, you'll encourage your students
to observe and detail This is a very exciting unit for young students because they have a chance to observe, touch, hold, and compare rocks and minerals for a number of hands-on experiences as they · Plan and conduct scientific investigations on different
forms of rocks and minerals. Through their long-term observations, students will learn that Rocks and Minerals are constantly formed in nature. By closely examining a variety of techniques, students see observable differences within the same minerals. And due to the selection of the lessons in this unit, your students will see the many of the investigative tools that are used by a scientist. Extensive use of Venn diagrams helps students organize their observations and draw conclusions about their observations in general. Essential Lessons: 1, 2-4, 7-9, 10, 11, 12 In doing each of the essential lessons, all content and performance standards will be met for the Washington State EALR's and Benchmarks. The lessons can be done in clusters or combined grouping. To ease Kit usage the following lessons should be done in the above sequence. The instructional approach to enhance student inquiry and discovery is to combine the lessons in clusters (1-4) , (7-9) , (10-12) and then culminate the unit with final project assessment (which can actually be one of the later lessons.) The grayed lessons should be done if time is available. This will assure that you will be able to accommodate all EALR and WASL requirements. If time is not available the grayed lessons could be eliminated, but this means that you will need to assure that the remaining lessons are done in breadth and depth.
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In this unit students explore
the properties of a set of rocks and find that rocks change as
a result of heat or pressure. They perform both simple and complex
field tests on minerals. The tests include a series of physical
and chemical tests including transparency, luster, hardness,
and magnetism.