Session 1 · VOICE: Validate the Problem
The museum's request
- 10 minHook: a mystery bag of five rocks. Feel each one without looking. Guess: which is heaviest, hardest, oldest? Then tip them out.
- 15 minRead the museum's request for a 'Rocks to Stars' evening. In groups, list what visitors might want to know about rocks, fossils and the night sky.
- 15 minSort your questions: we can observe it, we can test it, we need to look it up. Choose a context: fossil cliffs, our town's materials, or the night sky.
- 10 minShare the stones you brought from home. Put each on a class map of where it was found. What do you already notice?
Session 2 · VOICE: Observe
Rock detectives
- 5 minSafety: goggles on for scratching and fizz tests. Rocks stay on the tray.
- 30 minStations: look with a hand lens (grains or crystals?), lustre (shiny or dull?), streak on a white tile, scratch with a fingernail, a coin and a nail, a drop of vinegar (does it fizz?), and does it float (pumice)?
- 10 minRecord everything in a rock passport for each sample, with a sketch.
- 5 minExit card: what is the difference between a rock and a mineral? Use one of today's samples in your answer.
Getting started
Use the rock passport template with tick boxes for each test and a space for a sketch.
Stretch
Find out why quartz is so common in beach sand. Use the word 'hardness' in your answer.
Checkpoint
Every group has a completed passport for at least six rocks and can name one mineral.
Activities for this week
- Rock detective kit: How can you tell one rock or mineral from another?
Useful this week
- Geology – overview ↗ How Aotearoa's rocks tell the story of a land built on moving plates.
- The rock cycle ↗ How igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic rocks form and change into each other.
- What are minerals? ↗ The difference between a mineral and a rock, with everyday examples.
- Whanganui rocks and climate cycles ↗ How the layered cliffs near Whanganui record ice ages and warm times.
- Fossils ↗ New Zealand's fossil record, from shells to giant penguins.