Content and Learning Objectives
This curriculum unit is fundamentally interdisciplinary. In planning for it, I met with Mr. Christopher Greco, the Science specialist for Hearne ISD, and Mr. Miles Lacy, the Science teacher, who allowed my classes to use microscopes to view various slides. Here is what came from our meeting. He gave me 12 rocks from Ward’s Science +. Mr. Greco then went on to explain each. He stated that the First four are igneous, the second four are sedimentary, and the last four are metamorphic. Igneous rock comes from magma, which originates from deep within the Earth. Sedimentary means it was deposited, broken down, and then reassembled. And then metamorphic means it, taken, crushed, and pushed together with even more pressure.
Looking closely, I asked, “Is that man-made?” The answer came: “No, none of them are man-made. No, metamorphic is like being pushed down into the earth and being crushed under thousands of tons of pressure from the world…miles under the Earth, you have a cycle. There's like a rock cycle.” Sedimentary rocks, by contrast, are fine-grained and appear to be composed of different pieces. That's because these are all various pieces of rock that have been pushed back together. Then… if you look at igneous rock like these, it has either giant crystals or tiny crystals. Number three, and so three is granite, that's granite, that's easy, right? Number one is basalt. So, whether they cool quickly or slowly depends on the type of crystals. So, which one is cool, and which one is fast? Okay, cool, slow. It's like I said, ice cream. For instance, if you want smooth ice cream, you want to freeze it quickly because the crystals are finer. I can remember also as a child walking in the woods to a place we call the golden rocks. This was because the rocks shined and glittered when the sun hit them. These were medium-sized boulders that covered a large area. We would play on these for hours. It has been decades since I went there, however I know the golden rocks are still there. I will have to go there again one day and take that therapeutic nature walk.”
Comments: