Isn't a Mineral Just a Pretty Rock?

How are Minerals Identified Our class is currently working on building a Mineral Field Book which at the end of our lessons will have all the physical properties of twelve different minerals identified. This week the class did tests to determine the minerals shape, smell, and feel. Because we have just begun our work with minerals, the misconception identification and the vocabulary section fit in perfectly. The common misconceptions that Arlette and I focused on this week was the belief that rocks and minerals are the same thing and that minerals are not important to their lives. I used a fake conversation I had with my son, who is the same age as our students, to introduce the misconceptions. I told the class that he had been operating under those beliefs. When I asked if any of them had thought the same things ,many shook their heads that they had. I think hearing that another kid had shared the same belief allowed them to feel safe to say they had been mistaken as well. I think the conversation really got our point across and I hope the misconceptions are resolved! Our content vocabulary this week focused on the words that describe a mineral's physical properties and the tests we do to determine them. The words were not easy, and no matter how many time we reassured the kiddos that we would help them fill in their definition sheets, we had a few who were very nervous that they were not getting the vocab down correctly. We witnessed the same anxiety when we performing the testing; some kids got very upset when they felt they would not have their work completed by the end of the class. No amount of reassuring placated them. It was an issue I hadn't even considered before this class but I am positive I will never not consider it again! Some kids are going to be a bit more intense and I will remember that in my lesson planning and execution from now on. The flow of our class was relatively smooth this week. We had the kids working at three different stations so it could have been a disaster. The transition between the stations was smooth. The kids have a property sheet for each of the minerals they they are investing; so they are carrying around a packet of twelve sheets. We hadn't considered it but asking kids to move around and keep account for their various sheets could have been problematic. Arlette and I came up with the on-the-spot decision to make the kids hold their complete packet in the air before they moved to the next station. This way we had no "oh no, I think I left my mineral C paper at station 2," type of problems. Monday's lesson really showed me that with no matter how much planning we do, there really are just some issues we will not consider until we are facing them. We hear a lot about how we have to be flexible and Monday's class really reiterated that point.