I am passionate about two things:
1. Teaching students to value the planet we live on
2. Involving snacks into as many lessons as possible.
#2 should have been obvious by now. It’s slightly embarrassing how often food crops up in my plans.
So one of the units in my Earth Science curriculum spends several days discussing mining.
You know who doesn’t care about mining? 7th graders.
You know who cares A LOT about chocolate chip cookies? 7th graders.
See where I’m going here?
Making lessons concrete for students is SO important. For a group of 7th graders living in the middle of the 3rd largest city in the US- mining doesn’t really matter. They don’t see it. It doesn’t pop up on their instagram. They don’t walk by it on the way to the bus stop. So making them care is tricky. But SO important. Teaching my students to care and protect our Earth starts with teaching them to love the Earth.
And that starts with chocolate chip cookies 🙂
For this activity you essentially have your students try to “mine” the chocolate chips from the cookie while causing as little damage to the cookie as possible. At the end of the activity they have to attempt to “reclaim” the land by making the cookies look as much like it did originally as possible.
There are tons of way to extend this activity… one of my favorite ways is to get a bunch of types of cookies and have them discuss which type of land is best for mining. Of course having students apply this illustration to real mining is essential- otherwise you’re just destroying cookies 🙂
For the directions and lab I used for this activity head on over to my TPT store (https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Mrs-Hansons-Middle-School-Madness)
Happy Mining!
Staying Hip in the Middle 