My Lesson Plan

Blog post #5

This text provides a fairly good overview of the types of rock and how they interact in the rock cycle.  It comes from the free online text book and resource website www.ck12.org.  The website provides a large amount of supplemental resources such as work sheets and video links that back up the content being presented.  The complexity of the article allows it to be used in freshman, sophomore, and lower level junior and senior classes.  If I were teaching students with lower reading levels, this might need some frontloading from an activity during class to help introduce the concepts of erosion and deposition.  I would likely use this article as a take home reading assignment that could be read to back up understanding gained in class.

This text scored between a 4^th and 8^th grade reading level so the text should be fairly accessible to many students in high school.  Much of the text is easy to read with relatively short and simple words.  The sentences are also short making the text easier to break up and interpret smaller segments.  Many of the subject specific vocabulary is described quite well within the text with large conceptual terms defined in text and additional “problem” vocabulary defined towards the bottom of the page.

Question: Describe how the rock cycle can help us interpret the patterns we see in the rocks around us?

Lesson Plan for Part of The Rock Cycle

Name:            Nicholas Flinner

Title:               This lesson will be focusing on how sediments become rocks.

Date(s):          Tomorrow to three-four days from now.

Grade Level:  8-10

Time Frame:             3-4 days

Big Idea:        Use activities, discussions, and readings to increase comprehension of how rocks form, change shape, move on the landscape, and become different rocks.  The students have already learned how people use rocks (i.e. buildings, roads, counter tops, etc.) from the discussion we had at the end of the last unit so we will go deeper into how rocks form.  From here we’ll travel into the past and examine fossils and how the solar system was created.  This unit would likely go earlier in the year.

Objectives/Outcomes/Expectations:  Students should be able to explain types of rock, and how they change throughout the rock cycle.  They should also be able to show that rocks have a variety of possible changes based on erosion, temperature, and pressure. NGSS(s) ESS1.C, ESS2.A

Assessment [listing of strategies being used]. Later you will provide more specifics.

Materials Needed: plastic bottles, sand, silt, and clay, flocculation chemicals

Procedures (please provide detailed information as well as  indicate amount of time in bold for each procedure)	Academic Adaptation	Behavioral or Social Adaptation	Assistive Technology
- Sedimentation lab activity:  In this activity the students will make little models to demonstrate sedimentation rates.  Students will first make observations on the material (color, texture) and then predict what will happen when they are mixed together in water and allowed to sit for a few minutes. During the simulation, students will take down observations on what sediments settled first, second, and third. (30-45min) - Frontloading for reading: I’ll have the students do a quick write to learn up of what they observed and how the model might translate to a river depositing material in a delta.  (10min) - Take home an assignment with the Rock Cycle (relevant text) from the London geological society on how velocity changes cause sediment to settle out of water paired with an entry slip for the following day so the students can show what they observed in the presentation as well as any potential propagations of misconceptions from the previous day.  Students will also read Rocks and Processes of the Rock Cycle (Desonie). - Entry Slip:  Students will critically assess whether or not their hypotheses were upheld by the results and reflect on why their results might have differed from what they expected and come up with a question for the class. NEXT CLASS - Collect entrance slips with sponge activity on board.  Preferably a longer one related to the rock cycle or changing shapes so I can have time to read through slips.  Take attendance. - Activity on steps of rock making:  Divide students in to groups of 3-5 by comprehension levels gleaned from entrance slip, assign a fragment of reading for them to digest as a group.  Each group will have part of the lithification process ranging from sedimentation (remedial from yesterday) to cementation (newer concept from reading).  The groups will make drawings of their respective processes and present them to the class. They will then have to figure out where they line up against the other groups, synthesizing the process as whole. (30-60min) (Peer Collaboration) - Each group will develop a picture with a small explanation that will go on a semester long concept map on a bulletin board in the classroom.  Each student could then use those image to review when they needed extra help with a topic.