Reading the Environment is a science unit involving concepts of geologic time, understanding types of rocks and how they were formed, and plate tectonics.

As part of our study, the class visited a local quarry, along with a teacher from our district's Outdoor Ed department, so each child could gather samples of 12 particular kinds of local rocks and label them.

Students also each chose a rock from a science kit and then each researched the uses of “their” rock, observed it with a hand lens and used their close observation skills to accurately draw a color picture of the rock to accompany their research.

  

 

Each student then presented the rock and their brief report to the class. This experience gave them a reason to apply note taking and other research skills, a purpose of writing for an audience, the experience of directly teaching their peers, and preparing for our more extensive personal project sharing experience later in the year.

The class had worked, earlier in the year, with HOT Schools Teaching Artist Brian Gilley on songwriting. They applied their new skills to their science study, writing a song that teaches others what makes a rock an igneous (sedimentary, metamorphic or pure mineral) rock. Students were grouped according to the type of rock they had picked and studied. The"rock" songs were shared at an all-school assembly.

 

Here are three of the students' songs:

 

Minerals Song

Fire-formed magma 

Rock soup, rock soup 

Can be metamorphic, sedimentary, 

Or igneous, igneous. 

Minerals make them all. Minerals make them all.

 

Igneous is fire-formed 

Sedimentary’s water-formed 

Metamorphic’s formed by heat and pressure

From the crunching
Of Earth’s crust, Earth’s crust.

Words & music by Cam, Chris, Emily, Laura and J.J.

 

 

The Igneous Rock
I am fire-formed.

I am made of magma.
Yoyo magma, Yoyo magma

I am from fire.
Yoyo fire, yoyo fire.

 I have gas bubbles
Yoyo bubbles yoyo bubbles.

 

My brother’s basalt; he’s dull and brown.

My cousin’s geode; she’s shiny and round.

My sister’s a lava bomb, made from fire. 
My uncle’s gabbro; he’s hard as a plier.

They are all igneous, just like me.

Unlike sedimentary, we’re not formed in the sea.

 We . . . 
are the igneous rocks!

 

Words & music by Andrew, Aubrey, Brian, Nathan and Yavar.

 

 

Song of the Sedimentary Rock 

I used to be granite

But I got weathered 
Into wet sediments 
Carried to the ocean
There the little bits of me 
Layered with other sediments.

 

I’m a sedimentary rock

I’m a sedimentary rock 

Eventually I dried up
Revealing a new me.

I’m a sedimentary rock

 I’m a sedimentary rock

 I’m a sedimentary rock 
That’s how I became me.

 

Words & music by Abby, Ben, Claire, Patrick, Sam and William.