Teaching Geology is a Piece of Cake

I’m teaching General Science to middle school students once more using Apologia’s General Science Text, 2nd edition.

I taught this same course two years ago and blogged about it here. Chapter 5 of the General Science text is all about archeology. Chapter 6 starts the unit on Geology. I thought that a trip to the local cemetery might be a good way to experience both. By seeing the old graves and gravestones they could see artifacts from the past. By looking at how those artifacts have aged and changed over the years, especially the effects of weathering on the tombstones, they are experiencing some of the factors that geologists study. I’ll post more on that later.

This week we had to learn about the different types of rock – ingenious, sedimentary, and metamorphic. I did not have samples of each kind of rock, nor did I have time or money to take another field trip. I thought of finding samples in books and in my search two years ago, I came across this book – Geology is a Piece of Cake! The idea is to bake cakes that represent the different kinds of rocks we were supposed to study!

This class was such a big hit two years ago, that I thought I would do it again this year. Since there were no real experiments to go with this week’s study, the cake study fit right into my lesson plans naturally!

But here’s the difference – two years ago, I spent a couple of days baking all of the cakes I needed for the class. This year, I wised up and had my students bake them! They enthusiastically signed up for a cake and everyone who wanted to bake one got the chance. My friend and lab assistant baked one as well! Here are some of the results!

Aside from the book, Geology is a Piece of Cake, I used these ramekin dishes. They were inexpensive and I just gave them to the students to use.

This class is a lot of fun. It helps the students learn about the different rocks in a memorable way! With gluten free products I was even able to have my students on dietary restrictions participate. I made two changes this year that made the class a lot easier for me – having the kids bake the cakes was a big time saver for me and fun for them. I did make one cake that I could use for demonstration purposes. I tore the cake into pieces and compressed it in my hand to demonstrate how rocks form under pressure. I also used stacked cakes to demonstrate earthquakes. It was also good to have my back up cake because one student forgot to bring the assigned cake, so I wasn’t left in a bind.

The other big help for this unit, (and many other experiments in this book), is my mom-friend lab assistant. I can keep talking and teaching, and she keeps the experiments going. She served up the cakes and really, really helped keep the class flowing.

Apologia has a 3rd edition now that is written by a different author and has different chapters. This may be the last time I do Geology is a Piece of Cake, but I would really recommend this approach to teach geology for other middle school teachers.