Curated OER
CUPCAKE CORE SAMPLING
Students explore what is beneath the surface of the earth is one of the jobs of a geologist. Rather than digging up vast tracts of land to expose an oil field, or to find coalbearing strata, core samples can be taken.
Curated OER
Sampling the Ocean Floor
Students sample goodies from an unseen ocean floor and try to accurately describe their composition. This simulation helps students explain the limitations of sampling and the problem of obtaining representative samples of sea floor...
Curated OER
Core
Eighth graders take their own "core sample" with clay and/or play-dough and correlate the layers of the earth.
Curated OER
Cupcake Core Sampling
Students discuss core samples. In this environment lesson plan, students experiment discovering what is beneath the surface by using cupcakes as models finding out what sort of layers are found within the cupcakes.
Statistics Education Web
How Wet is the Earth?
Water, water, everywhere? Each pupil first uses an Internet program to select 50 random points on Earth to determine the proportion of its surface covered with water. The class then combines data to determine a more accurate estimate.
Curated OER
Bite Sized Core Sampling
Students define the origin of rock samples and how surface core samples can tell us about the history and make-up of Mars. Candies are used as a Martian surface sample. Students study the samples and make a hypothesis about the cause of...
Curated OER
Geologist and Core Sampling
Third graders observe a cupcake and attempt to answer each question on the observation page. They write three sentences that explains how a geologist takes core samples of the earth's surface. Students make sketches and write...
Curated OER
Areology-The Study of Mars
Students examine core samples from Mars and discover what they can use it to tell the history of Mars. In this core sample lesson students create and analyze their own core samples then eat them at the end.
NASA
Lava Layering
Take the old baking soda and vinegar volcano to the next level by using it to study repeated lava flows over time, examine geologic features on Earth and Mars, and speculate about some of the formations on Mars.
Curated OER
What's down there?
young scholars analyze how oil is formed and where in the Earth we find it. Students take a core sample to look for oil in a model of the Earth. They analyze their sample and make an informed decision as to whether or not they should...
Curated OER
Changing Planet: Black Carbon - a Dusty Situation
Introduce your young meteorologists to black carbon produced by the burning of fossil fuels by showing the video, "Changing Planet: Black Carbon." Viewers discover that deposition of this carbon on polar ice impacts the absorption of...
Curated OER
Layers of Rock
Juvenile geologists drill clear plastic straws down into a playdough sedimentary rock model, pulling out sample rock cores. As they analyze their cores, they apply the law of superposition and discover that originally horizontal layers...
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Core
Eighth graders examine conditions that can lead to the formations found and correlate the layers. For this rock layers lesson students complete an activity that allows students to take their own "core sample".
Curated OER
What on Earth is That and How Can I Get One?
Students examine how we use submersibles. In this technology based lesson, students examine various technologies used by submersibles in ocean exploration.
Core Knowledge Foundation
Rocks & Minerals
Take young geologists on an exploration of the rock cycle with this six-lesson earth science unit on rocks and minerals. Through a series of discussions, demonstrations, and hands-on investigations your class will learn...
Curated OER
A Bit of Engineering
Students discuss the drilling process. In this engineering lesson, students get into small groups and drill their own core samples in a sandwich using a plastic tubing, a jumbo straw, a slim straw and a offee stirrer predicting...
Curated OER
Let's Get To the Core!
Students practice analyzing ice core samples to discover climate changes. Using the samples, they identify and graph the gas amounts. They use these numbers to determine their effect on global warming. In pairs, they complete a...
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Sensational Soil
Fourth and fifth graders explore soil by taking a simulated field trip under the earth. They go to an Internet site that runs a simulation which charges them with finding a source of pollution that could destroy all of Earth's soil, and...
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Aerology- The Study of Mars
Students investigate various aspects of the planet Mars. They examine a core sample that is simulated to make observations. Then compare the known sample with one that is unknown and differentiate between the two. Students hypothesize...
Curated OER
The Mathematics of Convection: Nature's Model for Energy Production
High schoolers conduct a series of experiments to investigate density, buoyancy and climate. In this math activity, pupils design and build a hot air balloon to demonstrate convection. They research and write a paper about solar chimneys.
NASA
Mystery Planet
What can one learn about a planet based on a small surface sample? Learners will explore artifacts from a mystery planet and see what they can determine about the planet based on the evidence in front of them.
NASA
Is It Alive?
Determining whether or not something is living can be more difficult than it seems. Put your young scientists to work defining their own criteria to identify life, then work with three samples to see if they are alive or...
National Park Service
Rock Ranking
Junior geologists sort rocks and soil. They separate a sample of river gravel by size, shape, color, and other characteristics. To include Common Core standards, you could have little ones graph the number of particles in each sample.
Curated OER
What is Soil?
Third graders examine what makes soil by creating a Venn Diagram. In this Earth environment lesson, 3rd graders identify the different components that soil is made from. Students bring soil from their homes to examine and create a...