Lesson 8, Everybody Needs a Rock , is an introductory, exploratory lesson for the section of the unit on geology. Students listen to the story Everybody Needs a Rock by Byrd Baylor, then write ten rules for how to find a rock. Students collect rocks, observe and describe their properties, then set up a rock museum. Lessons 9-12 use the Britannica Science Systems Earth Materials Module . All descriptions of these lessons are quoted directly out of these modules.
Youngsters take apart homemade rocks to discover that rocks are made of different ingredients.
The module provides an introduction to fundamental concepts in earth science, and takes advantage of the youngsters' intrinsic interest in the subject matter and in their innate curiosity about the physical world around them. Lesson 13, Rocks in Our Watershed , takes the students out to their adopted watershed with a geologist to explore rocks and apply the concepts learned in the previous lessons. They also get to meet and interact with a real geologist, which makes them aware of this career opportunity. Samples of different rock types are collected from the watershed, placed around the relief map constructed earlier in the unit, and identified as to their collection locations and type. The relief map with rock samples is then displayed at a community event.