Lesson 8: Shining a Light on the Minerals!

This week's lesson was GREAT. Our students are doing a fantastic job with their observations and are understanding so much! L and I were so pleased when Ms. B reported that every student got a 100% on their rock cycle test last week! We were so pleased!

This week the students' attention and comprehension manifested in a variety of wonderful and challenging questions. It demonstrated that they were very engaged (even through my slightly verbose and complex explanation of some of the technological applications of some of their minerals!).

Here's how this week's lesson played out:

Went over the agenda as per usual. Shared science question: How much light does each mineral specimen transmit?

Goal: Light field test on each of 12 minerals, record observations. Then sort minerals according to ability to transmit light. Discuss findings, similarities, differences between specimens.
Overall, very smooth lesson.

Began lesson by sharing key pieces of information on 2 specific minerals that relate to the streak field tests they conducted. Both of these minearls also have important industiral applications today.
Hematite: streaks a reddish-brown or brownish/gray. Used hundreds of years ago by indigineous people as a pigment. Still used as a pigment today. Foudn all over the world, often is blackish/brownish in color and bumpy. Iron is often made from hemattie and iron is major ingredient in steel. Iron age began 3000 years ago with egyptians....ability to do metal work woudl forever shape history!

Graphite: streaks with a gray/black. NAme comes from 'graphos' greek to write, used for last 400 years to write with. Originally not encased in wood, so ppl got dirty using it. Now graphite used as industrial lubricant. You can tell it may work well as a lubricant because it feels slippery. For example, when graphite is ground it can be used with a lock/key as a dry lubricant. Graphite also has many other industrial applications because it conducts electricity and can withstand very high tempratures. Electrodes are made from graphite. Electordes conduct electricity from one place to anohter. (these last 2 remarks led to some extremely interesting questions, such as "Is an electrode similar to an electron?" I proceeded to try and differentiate the two and used another $10 vocabulary word: sub atomic particle. But I think the student that asked the question was able to understand! whew!

LD used wax paper, cardboard and transparent plastic to introduce the concepts of opacity, translucence and transparency...helped students describe these characteristics in their own words.

The observations conducted by each student pair went really well. The field test was relatively simple--it was to shine a light on each mineral and record how much light it was able to transmit. The class was super enthusiastic, as per usual. I was a bit surprised when Ms. B told her class it was too loud. I felt like the loudness was a reflection of their enthusiasm and they were working with partners, right? I felt like this took a bit of the momentum out the lesson and I know that I want my style to be more of a facilitator than a presenter. I don't want to be a dominator, but I want my class to have order too. Definitely thinking about the "middleway" of classroom managment!

One group noticed that mineral A, feldspar, was slightly translucent on thin edges....also had a very bright pen light. GREAT OBSERVATION!

This was a quick field test, so we had time to do a very good conclusion discusssion. Nearly every student was anxious to share their findings...again I LOVE their enthusiasm for learning and participating...a wonderful lesson indeed!

The Streaking of the Minerals!

The highlight of this past Monday's lesson was actually a writing assignment, which went over really well. In fact, it was better than we anticipated!

One of this weeks evaluation criteria was about including writing in our science lesson, so we decided to do a "How To Be" poem. A How To Be poem is composed of facts or statements about a certain thing. The example Ms. B gave me was from How To Be A Shark poem (find it on the last page of this handout) and had lines like: "Devour fish, or squid, or seals/And don’t worry if you break a tooth on a bone/Because you’ll grow 30,000 new ones in a lifetime." L and I agreed that this form would be perfect for our 4th graders, so we created a concept map based on How To Be A Rock!
We worked on the poems as a class and we were all impressed with the responses from our students. One of the best things about our 4th graders is the pure enthusiasm they exhibit as they approach nearly every task we give them. Once the students caught onto the structure of the poem they all had some fact to contribute. And nearly every line they contributed was a fact!
It was amazing to see how all the students participated!

It was wonderful to see how excited our teacher, Ms. B was at how well the process of writing poems came out. She confessed that she had never done anything like this in a science lesson and none of us anticipated it would end up being such a valuable assessment tool--which it was! L and I could easily ascertain what facts were popular as well as any misconceptions.



This week the students took part in their second field test, the streak test. I started off by demonstrating how to gently rub each mineral on both a white and black scratch plates to test the color of the minerals. The students would be testing the results of their scratch plate field test with the observable color of the mineral.

The students had plenty of time to complete this round of field tests and we closed out the lesson with a discussion about the similarities and differences between the observable color and scratch plate tests. Many students remarked about graphite--they were pleased that it left a dark mark when rubbed on both the white scratch plate and their science workbooks.

Inherent Properties of Rocks, uh I mean, MINERALS!

L and I really fought hard to balance all the information we felt like we needed to convey during this week's lesson. Combining lessons 4 and 5 seemed like no small task to us and we spoke at length debating about what the best aspects of each lesson to cut would be. It was a challenge since lesson 4 was the transition from studying rocks to minerals while lesson 5 was making physical observations of 12 (!) new mineral specimens! Condensing these activities into a 45min lesson was no small task...especially since one of our review criteria this week was on our conclusion!
(Last week we weren't even able to get around to a proper conclusion, so we really felt the pressure to manage our time in an efficient manner!)

Time management has been a challenge for us since the beginning and we should've allowed the students more time to observe the new mineral specimens. However, we also decided to begin a KWL chart (already Know, Want to learn and Learn) as well as starting one half of a Venn diagram on the observable properties of rocks (which we will later use to compare rocks with minerals). Amazingly, there was time for them to examine their minerals!


As we surveyed the students on what properties we observed it became apparent that some students had mistaken subjective observations for observable physical properites. For example, one student volunteered that her specimen #6 smelled like 'magma'. Another noted theirs smelled like popcorn! Leah and I weren't prepared for this and I tried to explain the difference between an objective observation and a subjective one. As I did I think I also dropped a few other $5 and $10 vocab words...and didnt even realize it was a problem until later that day...shux!

It was around this same time that I got a bit flustered and was thinking minerals as I spoke, but ended up saying 'rocks'. Whew! Fortunately L caught what I said and thanks to her we were able to get back on track.

I think Ms. B's students were ready to start doing some hands on science by observing the 12 exciting mineral specimens after listening to a few minutes of this lecture. Note to self: for future lesson plans, allow students the maximum time to do hands on work!

Like previous weeks we had no problems with classroom management and the students were an absolute joy to work with, as they were incredibly enthusiastic and were engaged 100% (even while I was talking about inherent objective properties represented in the atomic weight of mineralogical molecules!)

And, like I have in the past, I am making a new determination to simplify our lesson...stay tuned for an update next week!