Part 2: Research
The students will independently conduct research on rocks and minerals in order to gain information for part 3 for their presentation.
Materials:
- Internet accessible devices for each student
- Copy of "Rocks and Minerals Research" worksheet for each student
Duration:
- Part 2 should take approximately 120 - 150 minutes (about 3 days)
Activities:
1. The students will conduct their own research on rocks and minerals. Depending on the students' abilities of independent research the teacher could either guide the students to certain databases to look for information for their research, or if the students require more scaffolding, the teacher could provide students with links to articles to use for their research.
2. The site, https://nserocksandminerals.weebly.com , provides students with direct links to articles from databases on UDLibSearch, in addition to other expert sites. There are also links to the articles and videos from part 1, should the students want to have a second look at them. The articles in the provided links are in a variety of lexile levels, and many include the audio versions of the texts as well.
3. If the teacher does not have access to UDLibSearch (or access to the Britannica, WorldBook, Gale, and PebbleGo databases), or still need more resources, then the free site ReadWorks.org can be accessed. There are many articles on ReadWorks.org that can be accessed by the students online (after the teacher assigns it to them) or printed out for the students.
Articles on ReadWorks.org:
- What's the Big Idea... About Earth
- If Rocks Could Talk! Sandstone
- If Rocks Could Talk! Obsidian
- If Rocks Could Talk! Deformed Conglomerate
Assessment:
- The teacher can use the student responses to the "Rocks and Minerals Research" worksheet as a formative assessment.
- The summative assessment will be created in part 3 with the student-created presentation.