The End

Monday was our final science lesson.  The students did one last test on their minerals, luster. Our Geologists were definitely in the swing of things by week 7. They did awesome jobs conducting the luster test using the penlights.  The students were using geology terminology when they were examining the minerals’ luster.  They completed all but one category in their mineral field guides. They will be able to conduct the last test with their classroom teacher.

                            

For the past six weeks we have been working with the same students, and so I have witnessed different ways students work and learn.  Most of the students clearly understand the directions and get right to work. Some of the students need to have the directions explained to them more than once before they start working. These students are usually the same ones who need to be reminded to focus on their task. I also witnessed a few students who did not seem to be paying attention to the directions at all. These students would not do any work unless an adult was working with them.  This class also had 6 students with IEPs. It’s a good thing that there were 4 adults in the room, otherwise I don’t think Sarah and I would have been able to give these students the attention they needed to complete their assignments.

Our final assignment for the students was a quiz. We made up a 10 question cloze activity based on the rocks and minerals information we presented to the studetnts. We included a word list to help the students.  It was interesting to witness the students taking the quiz. Some students completed it pretty quickly, about 10 minutes, and some students took about 25 minutes to finish.  Again some students were not able to work on the quiz without the help of an adult.  I didn’t get to review all of the quizzes but I saw some really good papers with lots of correct answers.  I was glad to see that the students remembered the information from the beginning lessons. I think Sarah and I did a good job of teaching the students about rocks and minerals. I think the students did a job of teaching me and Sarah what being a teacher is all about. This classroom has students of different abilities and this definitely helped us to remember that all students do not learn the same way and that it is important for us to present information in different ways to accommodate the students’ different learning styles.





In the Home Stretch

I bet you didn’t know there was a scale to measure the hardness of minerals; it’s called the Mohs scale.  This week our budding Geologists performed tests on the minerals to determine their hardness.  The mother in me was a little nervous about this. The students were going to be using sharp nails and pennies to scratch the minerals and rate their hardness. I was concerned that students might try to scratch each other with the nails or just hurt themselves when using them. I was also concerned about pennies going in mouths, but then again I am the mother of a 4 yr. old.  Sarah and I made it a point to go over our safety rules and address the proper and safe use of the nails and pennies.

Agai       We broke the class up into 4 groups and had them work with 6 minerals at a time.  This part of the lesson flowed very smoothly since there weren’t any station changes and they were only doing one test.  We addressed the engineering and technology connection, which is, to identify materials used to accomplish a design task based on a specific property, e.g., strength, hardness, and flexibility; by having the students use nails to test for hardness. 

                                                            

We needed to address the technology connection and have the students do a writing assignment, so to accomplish both of the tasks we showed the class a PowerPoint on what a Geologist does. We didn’t want them to think the only job a Geologist had was to identify rocks and minerals.  After they watched and listened to the PowerPoint we asked them to write a paragraph about a day in the life of a Geologist or some aspect of a Geologist’s job. It was interesting to see the work of the students. Some students were really excited about the work a Geologist does and quickly wrote a paragraph about it. Some students needed more prompting and help with ideas. At the end we had lots of students who wanted to share what they wrote. 

                     

I thinI think we had another successful lesson and next week the students will be finishing their field guides.  They have two tests left. It will also be our last lesson. This has been a great learning experience for me and I hope the students have learned a lot about rocks and minerals from us.