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Lesson and Curriculum
 Lesson
at a Glance:
Curriculum: FOSS
Grade: Third
Topic: Rocks
The theme of the lesson that Laurie’s third graders worked on was
that rocks tell stories. Working with the Earth materials kit
from the FOSS curriculum, which Laurie says has a strong focus on hands-on
activities,
the children looked at a number of rocks that contained fossils,
and tried to decide what stories those rocks were telling them.
The video
features the second day of a two-day lesson. On the
first day, Laurie distributed the rocks and asked her students
to imagine that they are geologists and have just received a
new, fascinating sample.
She asked them what they would do as scientists to analyze this
fossil and rock. The children took their work seriously, taking
measurements, examining their rock’s properties, studying the fossil,
and taking rubbings of it. “They came up with some rather fascinating
things, experiments they wanted to perform,” Laurie said after the
lesson.
In day two of the lesson, Laurie had her students think about
the data they collected the previous day, and asked them to do
research to determine what kind of rock and fossil were in their
samples. “Hopefully
they have enough research materials between the Internet and
research books that they will try and use the data that they
compiled to match
to their fossil and to figure out what type of fossil it is,
and hopefully what kind of rock also.”
Laurie hopes the students
learn to be self-reliant when they’re
exploring their world: “If they can walk away this year and feel
good that they can do this independently, that they don’t feel intimidated
when asked a question, that they know where to go to find answers,
not to go always to people, but how they can start investigating something
on their own. That ’s
all we need.”
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