Opal To Obsidian: Getting Kids Interested In Rocks!
My students need hands-on materials for learning about the rocks and minerals in our world. The materials selected will help us in the find, identify, and categorize.
This project is part of the Black History Month celebration because it supports a Black teacher or a school where the majority of the students are Black.
My Students
Have you ever walked along the beach, or through the woods and found a rock that just caught your interest, but you just didn't know what kind it was? My students share this same curiosity and would love nothing more then to be able to compare and contrast different rock specimens.
My students are 7th and 8th Grade life and earth science students, who have to deal with many challenges growing up in our area.
For many, school is hard enough on its own without the threat of poverty and violence that may await you back at home. Unfortunately, many of our kids face these additional hurdles to their education.
Our Michigan Public Middle/High School is in the shadow of a once great automotive industrial town, and we have all of the economic hurdles that come with that. We are a small school, but our students have big hearts and minds that thirst to be expanded. Many of my students often stay afterschool for as long as they possibly can asking about extra credit or to get more personal instruction. The desire from many of our students to learn is there, and we try to expand and nurture that desire.
My Project
My student like many others love hands-on activities. With some of the equipment and resources that would be provided I plan on having a multi-stage project consisting of research, local field work (hammers and bins), identification (posters and computer), and analysis. This field activity will ignite students curiosity about their local geology and provide a greater understanding of what forces were at work in our community in the distant (or not so distant) past. With this activity my student will learn how to identify, categorize, compare and contrast, take scientific notes, group collaboration, discussion, and local geology.
The other materials I have suggested are to provide students with a base of minerals that may not be found in our local geology and to show the students that rocks and mineral vary greatly in color, shape, and structure. The last material requested is a grow your own crystal kit, which I plan on using with the kids once we are further into this project.
This project is important because many of my students don't get to experience nature in an educational and hands-on way.
By you helping to get the equipment and resources into my students hands, I can guide them and help them feel more knowledgable and become more interested in the natural world around them. "You don't make the shots you don't take" and this project might be the fire that lights up a young geologist or rock hounds interest in rock and mineral science.
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As a teacher-founded nonprofit, we're trusted by thousands of teachers and supporters across the country. This classroom request for funding was created by Mr. Horton and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.