Science Cycles...

There are so many fun ways to teach Science. Two years ago when I was teaching Grade 6/7 at middle school I got a great activity from a teacher in my community. It was the Rock Cycle and each person started off as a rock and would go to different stations and roll dice to see what happened to them as a rock.

For example they would go down a river and break down or they would erupt from volcano and so on and so forth. They record where they travel to and why, this helps understand how rocks erode or compact and how they move between sedimentary, igneous and metamorphic rock.  In the end they did a comic on their journey as a rock.

Here are some samples:

I blogged about this project before - see here.

 Well, there is a similar activity for the water cycle that I saw this on a blog:

I absolutely adore the water cycle simulation game.  There are several free versions of this on the web, but my favorite is from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.  You put up signs in different parts of your room for lake, soil, river, plants, ocean, etc.  Each station has a cube to roll.  Students travel through the water cycle as a drop of water.

As a TTOC this would be a fun science lesson to plan and have to use if/when you need it.

Rock Cycle Project (Middle School)

Last Year I was teaching in a temporary contract last year for grade 6/7 and a colleague of mine shared so many great ideas for Science. This one was for the Rock Cycle and she had dice made up that had different things that could happen to a rock to change it's form. There were also stations set up such as "the river" and "inside a volcano" and so on.

The first thing we did after the unit on ROck Cycles was set up the stations and students could start wherever they wanted. They would roll the dice and do as it instructed. For example "the volcano erupts and you become particles in the air" or from the clouds "rainfall takes you to land" or "you wash down the river"

Students would go to the next stationa nd record their journey as a rock.

Then they got to create a comic to show the journey and the changes they undertook as a rock. They had a lsit of vocabulary to use to accurately describe their journey and were able to talk about the type of rock they started as and the changes the went through.

Here are a couple examples:

They really enjoyed this project because of the interaction during the stations and the creativity they could use for the comics. I loved this project because it clearly showed who really understood the unit and could explain it and who wasn't quite there.

This could easily be adapted for other levels.