Rocks and Minerals
Lesson 10
Exploring the Hardness of Minerals
Students explore minerals to learn more about their properties by performing the hardness test and recording their results.
3. Lesson set up and Management
INQD: Simple instruments, such as magnifiers, thermometers, and rulers provide more information than scientists can obtain using only their unaided senses.
PS2A: Objects have properties, including size, weight, hardness, color, shape, texture, and magnetism. Unknown substances can sometimes be identified by their properties.
PS2B: An object may be made from different materials. These materials give the object certain properties.
- Students will conduct a test to explore the hardness of the mineral samples.
Scratch testing - How hard is each mineral?
3. Lesson set up and Management
Materials:
- The sorting mat blackline master can be reproduced and used to help the students keep track of their ideas.
Student Management:
- Assign one partner to be the materials manager and have that student pick up the materials from the materials center after you model how to do it.
- PROCEDURE #5
- Have the information about "soft, medium and hard" listed on the board or in the word bank for easy assess during student testing.
- FINAL ACTIVITIES #4
- Avoid having students share which mineral has which name. This will halt the inquiry process for the rest of the students. Instead focus on which test results/observations helped them reach a conclusion. This will allow other students to look at the same results, analyze them and hopefully make a conclusion of their own.
Writing Support:
- Students will record their observations on their Mineral Profile sheets.
- Students record three important pieces of information about diamond and talc in their science notebook.
- Students can respond to this reflection question at the end of the lesson in their science notebook - Why might your group's results be different then another group's? Share two reasons why.
Reading Support:
- There is information to read on page 38 of the student activity book about the minerals, diamond and talc. This is a great chance for students to partner read and record information in their science notebooks as they read to help them identify these minerals.
Math Support:
- Students can create a fractional representation of their result. For example, "5/12 of my mineral samples were soft." Have them draw a picture to represent the fraction.
Last updated 06/18/2009