Cycle 2

In the last cycle, student figured out that Earth’s materials make up objects important to our daily lives. They explored different types of minerals and the elements they are composed of, and how these minerals are changed in order to create synthetic objects.
In this cycle, students will construct an explanation that answers the guiding question: What are Earth’s materials made of and how are they formed? Students use rock kits in order to explore patterns found across rock types. They play a game that allows them to construct an initial model of the rock cycle, and read text about this topic in order to construct an argument about how a rock may have come to be based on evidence from the game model and the reading.
As students move into Concepts 2 and 3 they will revise their rock cycle model and add additional details as they go deeper into each of these geoscience processes that create sedimentary, metamorphic, and igneous rocks.