Exploring the Rock Cycle Scavenger Hunt

Lesson Objective:

Students will gain an understanding of the rock cycle by experiencing interactive web sites designed to enhance understanding of the transformation of rocks between the igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic stages.

California Content Standard:

Fourth Grade Science - Earth Science
4. The properties of rocks and minerals reflect the processes that formed them. As a basis for understanding this concept:

1. Students know how to differentiate among igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic rocks by referring to their properties and methods of formation (the rock cycle).
2. Students know how to identify common rock-forming minerals (including quartz, calcite, feldspar, mica, and hornblende) and ore minerals by using a table of diagnostic properties

Technology Standard

5. Technology research tools:

* Students use technology to locate, evaluate, and collect information from a variety of sources.
* Students use technology tools to process data and report results.

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Web Resources

• USGS Rock Information Table of Contents Page - Includes information on igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic rock, as well as the rock cycle. Click Here to visit the USGS site.
  
• Exploring Earth - How do rocks change? Includes and interactive animation of the rock cycle. Click here to see the animated rock cycle.
• Faces of Earth: The Rock Cycle - amazing pictures of rocks, games, as well as information about types of rocks and the rock cycle. Click here to view The Faces of Earth site.
• USGS Ask A Geologist - Have questions you can't find the answers to? Try asking an expert! Click here to ask a geologist

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Questions For Research

1. Identify the three types of rock, and how they are formed.
2. What are the differences between igneous rocks that form above the ground vs. below the ground? Why do you think these differences occur?
3. In what type of rock would I be most likely to find fossils, and why?
4. What clues might you find within a rock to tell you what type of rock it is?
5. Explain how metamorphic rocks are formed. Which types of rocks can become metamorphic rocks?
6. What are some common ways that each type of rock is used?
7. In the water cycle there is never "new" water created - it is all recycled. Is the same true of the rock cycle?
8. Identify and explain at least four ways that metamorphic rock and igneous rock might turn into sedimentary rock.
9. Identify and explain at least two ways that metamorphic rock and sedimentary rock might turn into igneous rock.
10. Explain how sedimentary and igneous rocks become metamorphic rock.
11. Based on what you learn in this exercise, develop 3 questions that you do not have the answer to. Go to the USGS Ask a Geologist website, ask the questions, and report your answers.