Lesson 6: This mineral smells like….wet cement, magma, popcorn, rotten eggs!

(***This is a belated blog post and appears out of order with other posts)

Lesson 6 was on observing and describing each mineral’s appearance, texture and smell.

We had a few challenges with materials management for this lesson since we were working with water; we needed vessels and lots of paper towels. Neither of those items were in the rocks and minerals box or the classroom, but I was able to get a large roll of paper towels from the supply closet while Ms. B got some plastic cups. We gave each student several pieces of paper towel, but in retrospect I think we should’ve have given them more. I would’ve also given them less water in their vessels, stressing to them repeatedly to only use a *very small* amount. While I made a large mineral profile sheet Leah put our agenda, science question and lesson goal as well as process skills up on the white board.

During the first part of this lesson we focused on modeling exactly what we wanted the students to do, reminding them to consider the science question of “What do each of the 12 mineral specimens look like, feel like and smell like?” while conducting their field tests. I also did my best to use accessible vocabulary while explaining the relationship between rocks and minerals. We also spoke specifically about sulfur and feldspar.

Lastly, before we moved on to the field tests Leah passed out vocabulary lists to each student. As each student looked the list over we explained that they would have a quiz later that week, but they needn’t worry since they knew every word on the list based on our previous presentations. (We were so pleased to hear that each student scored a 100% on the quiz!!!)

I explained how to conduct field tests to the students and then the class paired off to conduct field experiments. The experimentation went well. Again, I felt like it took us a long time to get around to letting them do the hands-on activities and although we made a vow last time, it was still very difficult to halt the many questions we received while moving through several additional goals. We also encountered some difficulty in gently explaining the difference between subjective and objective observations, since as we conducted a class dialogue on observations some students shared some rather subjective observations, such as our mineral A smelled like magma or our mineral F smelled like popcorn. Another student remarked that it was impossible to know what magma smelled like and we tried our best to correct this misconception while still encouraging the student. In retrospect, it was a classic teachable moment!

Lesson 6 was the best lesson yet, since Leah, and I working really well together. We both began to get a lot more confident presenting in the class while being observed, working with Ms. B (we both grew accustomed to her style—we actually began to really appreciate her candid feedback and additional comments).