Download Iron Hill Museum Middle School Geology Program Teachers: This

Iron Hill Museum
Middle School Geology Program
Teachers: This program is adaptable to multiple grade levels and compliments the following Delaware
Science Coalition units. Essential questions, what students should know, understand and do are based
on both the museum visit alone. Further inquiry and discourse is expected when returning to the
classroom.
Middle School:
Delaware Science Coalition Unit: FOSS Earth History Module
Our Essential Questions:
1. How does energy from the Sun and Earth’s interior cause rocks to cycle from one
kind to another?
2. What are the processes that form minerals and rocks and how do the processes
function?
3. Why are rocks and minerals not evenly distributed on the Earth?
Vocabulary to know: organic, inorganic, mineral, rock, igneous, metamorphic, sedimentary,
intrusive, extrusive, luster, cleavage/fracture, convection, process
Major understandings:
1. All processes that affect rocks and minerals are a result of energy from the Sun or
Earth’s interior.
2. Rocks cycle from one kind to another due to processes that are aided by the
hydrosphere, atmosphere, biosphere, and geosphere.
3. Humans depend on rocks and minerals for many purposes. These resources are
distributed unevenly around the Earth due to geologic processes of the past and
present such as volcanic activity, converging and diverging of tectonic plates, and
rise and fall of sea level.
Students will do:
1. Observe and learn how minerals are classified.
2. Observe and understand the processes that cycle rock.
3. Discuss the processes that form different rock types and how these processes are
aided by the biosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere and geosphere.
4. Observe the modeling of tectonic plate movement and the resulting processes that
form rocks.
5. Using an understanding of the process that form rocks, discuss why rocks and
minerals are not evenly distributed on Earth.
Standards:
Grade Level Next Generation Science Standards
Common Core ELA and Math
Middle
School
Earth
While at the museum, students will examine the cycling of rocks from one kind into
another and discuss the energy that drives these processes (i.e., melting, crystallization,
weathering, compacting/cementation, pressure, deformation). In the classroom, other
Science
Middle
School
Earth
Science
media can be used to clarify the rock cycle and its processes.
NGSS MS-ESS2-1 Students model the rock cycle and its processes.
ELA SL.8.5 Students create a presentation that integrates multimedia such as video clips,
pictures and sound bites, to explain the rock cycle and the flow of energy throughout.
While at the museum, students observe how minerals and rocks are not evenly
distributed across the Earth but are found at locations due to geologic processes. In the
classroom, students can examine where other resources are located and explain the
pattern based on geologic processes past or present (i.e. petroleum distribution, metal
ores such as copper, minerals such as diamonds).
NGSS MS-ESS3-1 Students construct an explanation to describe how the uneven
distribution of rocks and minerals on earth occurred as a result of geologic processes.