Title: Rock and Soil That Rock the USA!

Topic: Rocks and Soil Purpose: Students from all around the USA will take and submit pictures of the different rocks and soils in their regions with a description of them for students in different parts of the world to get a hands-on look at how many different types of rocks and soils are in our world. Standards/Objectives: National Standard: NSE Content Standard D: Earth and Space Science - As a result of activities, students should develop an understanding of the properties of earth materials. State Standard: SKE2. Students will describe the physical attributes of rocks and soils. Objectives: a. Use senses to observe and group rocks by physical attributes such as large/small, heavy/light, smooth/rough, dark/light, etc. b. Use senses to observe soils by physical attributes such as smell, texture, color, particle/grain size. c. Recognize earth materials soil, rocks, water, air, etc. Description of Learners Kindergartners One day we will go out and take pictures of different rocks and soils around the school. Another day we will go on a field trip to a place in the town with different rocks and soil. We will have students take pictures of rocks and soils at their homes and bring them to class. We will then categorize the same ones and pick the best picture to upload. All students will describe the soils and rocks together and we will make a description to put on the website.

There will be a submission box for other classrooms to submit their contact info to get their descriptions and pictures and once we get that, we will post a blog post on the website for the project. Timeline The project will last a whole semester, about 3.5 months. First 2 Weeks: The project will start on the second week of school when students learn about rocks and soils. We will spend 2 weeks creating our presenceby taking photographs of rocks and soils at our schools and at a destination unknown in the city. During summer, the teacher will use forums to contact other schools around the United States to see if any other schools are interested. Last 3 Months: The last three months we will check our project e-mail for submissions by the other classes that wanted to be a part of our project and we will talk about the soil and rock pictures that are submitted and how they are an important part of the eco system in that part of the United States. Project Details: A. The experts will be the children/classes who submit their photos and descriptions to the project. B. The method of communication will be through a contact box on the teachers website and then e-mail. Once everything has been received through the e-mail the teacher will post the classs location, picture and description. C. To recruit other teachers/classes I will start in June and post the pitch of the project on telecollaborative teaching websites/forums to see how many teachers will be interested in joining our Project for the semester. Place to Share Information with Others: I will be sharing the others submissions on a blog that will be located on a page of my teacher/classroom website that all who are participating will be able to see. Description of Student Assessment of Learning: The assessment for students will be to how they describe the different rocks and compare and contrast the findings in different locations. The standard is for them to describe using their senses the rocks and soils. Students will use their senses for the submissions they make and will see other students use of their senses when they read the descriptions given for their submissions on the blog.

1. Description of student assessment of learning