Rocks Year 3

Whole lesson Year 3. Meets National Curriculum Objective: compare and group together different kinds of rocks on the basis of their appearance and simple physical properties.

This lesson has been prepared as an exciting practical start to the topic of rocks and soils - ideal for the first lesson in a unit of work. This resource pack includes:

• Lesson plan
• Lesson presentation
• Printed activity/recording sheet
• Printed learning objective
• Rock name labels (editable)
• Name that rock printout - (identification chart) for help identifying the rock as an alternative to pre-labelling.

Children are given an input based on properties of different materials and are then asked to consider the properties of different rocks, by examining them. After that they decide how to sort/group them, based on the properties they have just observed.

I’ve delivered this lesson for two years without the slide show and the printouts, and I know it will be better for it - the children always enjoy it, regardless - and it enthuses them for the rest for the topic - this is simply tightening/smartening up.

Tip: If you are spending the whole afternoon on the activity, use setting circles/hoops and encourage children to create physical Venn diagrams with the rock samples, according to their own sorting criteria written onto post-it notes (as in the last slides of the slide show).

Please note: you will need access to rock samples to deliver this lesson - I have left editable boxes on the rock labels, as well as including the most likely to be used rocks. (I selected 7 types that could be gathered together fairly easily)

I hope you enjoy using this resource. I would be grateful if you could leave a review.