American Museum of Natural History: 7th Grade

 

Igneous, Metamorphic, and Sedimentary Rock

 

Grade Level:            7th Grade

 

Subject: Earth Science

 

Learning Standards:

New York State MST Standard 4 – Science, Physical Setting (Knowledge of Earth phenomena that involves interactions among components of air, water, and land….)

NYS MST Standard 6 – Interconnectedness, Patterns of Change

NYS MST Standard 7 – Interdisciplinary Problem Solving

 

Time Requirements:

PreVisit Lesson = 45 minutes

Visit = 90 minutes

 

Topics Covered by This Lesson:

The Gottesman Hall of Planet Earth

Three Major Types of Rocks

Igneous

Metamorphic

Sedimentary

 

PreVisit

Purpose:

To have the students become acquainted with the layout of the museum (Gottesman Hall of Planet Earth) and what they will be doing there.

To briefly review the three major types of rocks.

 

Objective/Procedure:

Briefly review with the students what the three major types of rock are and how they are formed.

Explain to the students what they will be required to do during their visit.

Hand out the task requirements for their visit (what information they will be gathering and questions they will be answering).

Have the students become familiar with the Gottesman Hall of Planet Earth and the task requirements by surfing their website: www.amnh.org/rose/hope.  This is an excellent website that includes a virtual tour of the Hall.

 

Materials Required:

Classroom/School Internet Capability

Student Learning Prerequisites:

Students must know how to use the Internet.

Students must have gone over the three major types of rocks before.

Students must have some familiarity with some of the general Earth processes.

 

Visit:

Students are going to go to the display entitled: How Do We Read the Rocks?

Students then are going to find the three major types of rock and describe each.

They will look at the textures of the rocks under the microscope and describe how they differ.

Students will then find three different rocks within the museum at different displays and determine what types of rocks they are.  Explain why.

When they are done, students can visit any of the other displays (within The Gottesman Hall of Planet Earth only) at their own leisure.

 

Post Visit

Assessment:

Review with the students in class what they have learned on their visit and have them hand in their rock assessments (what type of rock) from the visit.

What do the three types of rocks look like?

What rocks have they chosen?

What type of rock is it and why?

Extensions and Suggested Homework Assignments:

Have the students collect rocks in the surrounding neighborhood and have them try to hypothesize what type of rocks they are.

 

Possible Questions:

What types of rocks would you find around Hawaii more often than not?

What types of rocks would you probably find in New York City?

What displays would you like to spend more time at next time at the Hall?  What did you find most interesting?

What does a geologist do?  How do you become a geologist?


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