• Classifying rocks and minerals by characteristics, including streak, color, hardness, magnetism, luster, and texture

Rock Hounds Lesson Plan
This lesson plan is adaptable for K - 8 grade and has a wonderful resource on online activities and information for students to explore.

Solid Rock University  
An Earth Materials Webquest. This also includes many links to informative and interactive resources.

Layers of the Earth
This lesson introduces the layers of the earth and the basic composition and distance of each.

Structure Of The Earth
The students will understand the structure and composition of the earth.

The Earth Bowl
The Earth Bowl is a three dimensional, edible representation of the earth in cross section.  This lesson will describe how to create an Earth Bowl.

Everybody Needs a Rock
This 5-day unit provides a variety of activities for students to observe, sort, and classify rocks. This unit can also be done with any type of object (seeds, leaves, tools, shells) that you have available to complement your curriculum.

Collecting Rocks
Students will acquire background knowledge of rocks, how they are formed, how they are used, and how to collect them.

Rocks and Minerals – Uses Past and Present
Students will learn the importance of rocks in past and present societies. Student will discover the many uses of rocks.

Minerals – The Building Blocks of Rocks
Students will acquire an understanding of how rocks are composed of different minerals.

Earth’s Layers
Students use food to make a model of the Earth’s layers.

Introduction to Geology: The Layers of the Earth
This is an introductory lesson that can be expanded into the following areas: Geology, volcanoes, earthquakes, and archaeology. It introduces the layers of the earth and the basic composition and distance of each.
 

Rock Hounds View these rocks and read how they were made. After looking at these pages, take the quiz to test your rock smarts by seeing if you can remember which rocks are sedimentary, metamorphic, and igneous!

Rocks and Minerals Links to resources and activities

Volcano World Resources and links for volcanoes

Activities and Teaching Suggestions for Plate Tectonics First four are links to online worksheets identifying the layers of the earth.

The Earth’s Layers In this online lesson you need to click on the buttons and icons to move through the pages.

Inside the Earth Links, lessons, and activities about the earth.

Science Online A must see! Great site for links to Blueprint Skills, Lesson Plans, Topical Sites, Interactive Websites for Students and Worksheets

Science Clips You will find an alphabetical list of science interactive movie clips.

Suggestions for English Language Learners (ELLs):
(E/B=Entering/Beginning, D=Developing, E=Expanding) 

(E/B): Make a class list of shapes and colors and match with illustrations.
(E/B): Discriminate between two objects based on one attribute, such as weight or texture. Which is heavier, smoother?
(E/B): Draw an object based on an oral description.
(E/B): Create a list of words to describe colors, shapes and other attributes such as rough, smooth, small.
(E/B): Group a collection of rocks by attributes and describe it to a peer. Show other groupings.
(E/B): Students will classify several rocks by their color, shape, and composition; (D): ...and will describe sample rocks using a predetermined set of adjectives; (E): ...and then will partner with another student and will take turns describing each rock using scientific descriptors.
(D): Select rocks from a group according to a particular attribute. Tell how the rocks are related and why the others were not selected.
(D): Describe an object in writing using a "missing word" sentence and a word bank which may have words separated in categories.
(E): Write several sentences describing each of five different rocks and suggesting how each might be used. Let others identify them after reading.
 

© 2005 Mobile County Public Schools
 MCPSS is not responsible for the content of links beyond the initial levels
  in this site and does not officially endorse any software or other products mentioned 
on the linked sites.