Unit Plan
Slide Decks
With Resources, Activities + Assessments within (Scroll down for Unit plan and lessons)
Unit Plan
Unit Plan
Part 1: Rocks VS Minerals. What is the difference?
Activity: Make a cookie, lego demo
Assessment: Rock vs mineral guessing game/Exit card
Part 2: Minerals
How to tell minerals apart. (Mineral testing - Colour, Lustre, Hardness, cleavage, streak)
Activity: Try out the different tests on some common minerals (Streak, magnetic, hardness)
Assessment: Mineral ID. Test out different minerals to find what they are.
Common Rock forming Minerals (Quartz, Mica, Hornblende, K-Feldspar, Calcite) See Slides.
Uses of minerals in our everyday lives
Activity: Mineral Use Bingo
Assessment: Mineral use game, Creative writing - What would happen if you didn't have minerals in your life?, Mineral Use Worksheet
Part 3: Rocks
The 3 Rock Types - Formation (Rock Cycle). Video.
How to tell the rock types apart locally
Activity - ID some rocks students have found as sedimentary, igneous, or metamorphic.
Common local examples of each (Limestone, slate, granite, Diorite, Gneiss). What minerals are in each?
Stories rocks tell us (Indigenous Stories, Evidence of travel, Erosion, water, or heat in its history)
Activity: Sort rocks based on smooth vs rough, big mineral size vs small, and light vs dark. Each of these tells a story about the rocks history.
Assessment: Have students create a rock story in dramatic form, creative writing, or a comic. The story can be based on a rock they found, have, or supply the students with a box of rocks or pebbles. Have them ID the rock, then with the knowledge of the rock cycle, and evidence of its form, create a story of how it got there.
Part 4: Human Use and Impact
Mining and its impacts.
Activity: Chocolate Chip Cookie Mining (in Slides above)
Assessment: Costs and Benefits of Mining (In Slides above)
Canada's Natural Resources - What R+M do we produce?
Activity: Explore ArcGIS mineral map of Canada, Mineral of Canada Poster (Both in Slides above)
Early Society Uses of Rocks/Minerals
Explore some of the ways early societies use Rocks and compare it to today.
Activity: Listen to some rock stories from indigenous nations across turtle island
Activity: Traditional Games you can play with your class. Have students make up a rock game
Activity: "Cave Painting" with sidewalk chalk (more details in slides above)
Activity: Guess the tool (In slides above)
STEM Activity: Make a stone tool with found objects in your schoolyard/greenspace (See slides)
Assessment: Venn Diagram on uses of rocks and minerals past and present
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STAO R+M Lesson Plans for Gr4
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