CH. 3 of Explore the Salish Sea
Salish Sea Rocks
About the unit
Rocks only look still and lifeless. But if you could see a time lapse of their existence, you’d see them building up from eroded sediments and discarded shells, twisting and squishing from heat and pressure deep in the earth, then melting and oozing or blasting from volcanic eruptions, only to solidify and erode again. It’s the rock cycle and it is the supply of a rockstar lineup of rolling stones! Each change yields new types of rock and these come in all shapes, sizes, and a rainbow of colors.
In this unit you’ll first let students get to know an individual rock, then line it up to make a class-wide rock rainbow. Students will keep their rocks with them as they explore how geology shaped the Salish Sea in a mapping adventure, learn the rock cycle through dance moves and cookie models, model glaciation and erosion with ice blocks and the cookie, then finally uncover the true identity of their own rocks, using a dichotomous key. Of course, by then each child will be quite attached to his or her rock and will love to paint eyes on it, give it a name, and keep it as a rock buddy at school for the rest of the year.
By downloading this curriculum, I agree to complete the educator surveys and pre- and post-assessments with my students.
UNIT PLAN
The unit plan for Ch. 3 comes in 2 parts. You may download and print each one or follow along on your computer where all links to external websites and documents will be live at your fingertips. Here you will find NGSS, Learning Targets, Success Criteria, what to prep, and a list of materials and online resources you will use in the lessons, activities, games, labs, and engineering that will help students explore the essential question they choose.
Weathering and erosion at work. Photo by Tristin Munich
STUDENT JOURNAL
This is your students’ place to wonder, record observations, take notes, diagram, and plan and record scientific investigation or engineering processes. It will scaffold each step of learning, but give the locus of control to the students as they explore. It is also a place to celebrate hard work with well-deserved stamps on the back page.
HOW TO PRINT
In Microsoft Word, click on the Layout menu, scroll down to Pages options, and select Book fold in the drop down menu by Multiple pages. Print in landscape orientation on 8.5 x 14” paper with two staples along the center fold.
SLIDESHOW
Use these PowerPoint slides with video and resource links as an aid to help guide, but not dominate, your learning progression. Feel free to modify content and add or remove slides to best fit your learning goals. Where there are place-based maps, videos, or project examples, replace with similar content, specific to your school’s region or relevant to your students’ lives and interests.
PRE-ASSESSMENT
Gauge pre-existing knowledge and interest with this brief quiz. When the unit is finished, don’t forget to take the post-assessment. Classroom teachers, use student achievement data gathered from these assessments for a TPEP Cycle of Inquiry.
WONDER
Give your students a visual or sensory experience that provides a chance to wonder at an inaccessible place in the ocean. This may be a hands-on outdoor activity, an observational field trip, or an in-classroom presentation, video, or still photo, such as the one to the right, to invoke curiosity about a phenomenon students can’t wait to try to solve.
Cretaceous aged ammonites, giant molluscs that crushed prey with their beaks.
ESSENTIAL QUESTION
After the experience in 2. above, this is the time to write questions inspired by their reading and the Wonder phenomenon into their journals. After students have read and written, students will discuss what they wondered and form a question in each team that will be further distilled into a whole-class question to guide your explorations.
Develop the essential question around a feasible mystery or problem they’d like to solve.
BACKGROUND RESEARCH
Once you have established an essential question, the information-gathering begins... or continues. Background research will begin with the reading of the book and continue through the games and activities described in the unit plan. In this link you will find a few more resources students may need along the way. Of course, you’ll come back to this step throughout the process, as your questions and claims will require support.
DEVELOP A TESTABLE QUESTION
This is when your students take that larger essential question and distill it down into specific, testable question. In this unit that will have to do with a survey of the rock (or sand, gravel, etc) at a beach near you or even on your own school grounds and whether that size of sand grains is suitable for wildlife habitat.
PUT SCIENCE TO WORK
Identify variables, design a procedure, carry out an investigation, analyze data, and see where active discovery leads. To answers? Solutions? More questions to test? Or maybe even back to the drawing board to start all over again. The scientific process is never linear and never ends, but it is always an adventure! With the guidelines in the student journal and this amazing interactive tool, you will guide your students’ research like a pro. Students can even use this tool to track the steps of their own science process and convert it straight into a slideshow!
How Science Works diagram by UC Berekely Museum of Paleontology
COMMUNICATE YOUR FINDINGS
This is a crucial part of the scientific process. It is the part where the results of all your hard work can make a difference. This may be a difference in the choices a few citizens make each day to help the sea or a new bill on the Senate floor that changes the way our whole state helps the whales. In this unit, students will hone their science communication skills through a forum with their peers.
POST-ASSESSMENT
At the end of the unit, administer this post-assessment and record the results, then calculate the difference between the pre- and post-assessment scores to measure student growth for the individual and the whole class.