Happy New Year!!!
In class this week we are continuing our exploration of the rock cycle.



Just before the holiday break we used wax crayons to demonstrate the forces that create the three different types of rocks found in the rock cycle sedimentary (my favorite!), igneous, and metamorphic. If you are really interested in rocks and want to dig deeper than we have time for stop by http://imnh.isu.edu/digitalatlas/geo/basics/diagrams.htm for an "in depth" look at the rock cycle.

The first part of class was used to catch up on old business, namely checking our science notebooks. Some classes needed some lab time to finish up two specifics that I was checking for: crystal observations and the wax rock cycle. The crystals that students observed were sugar, sea salt, rock salt, Epsom salt, and compared them to the crystals that we grew in lab that looks more or less like this

In the future students will use their science notebook to help identify mystery crystals which should determine how well they observed and documented the ones they saw in class.

The next piece of the puzzle that we began in class but will not finish until next week is to have students experience what a rock would experience traveling through the rock cycle. In our case the rock's name is Little Timmy and his exploits will be documented and turned into a cartoon time-line to be displayed outside Pangaea house on the bulletin board. There are seven stations that students travel to on their journey: mountains, Earth's interior, clouds (weird huh?), Ocean bottom, river, volcano (Hot Hot Hot!), and soil. Each station has dice that they roll which instructs them what just happened to them in the 10,000 years that they were at that stage of the cycle. The dice then instruct the student to stay at that station or to travel to a different one. So far most classes created their dice and documented their travels but have not finished the cartoon time line that tells the story.

If you have any questions, feel free to email me at mark.russo@emid6067.net