THIRD QUARTER (POST CMT)

UNIT 6: THE ROCK CYCLE

II. UNIT 6: The Rock Cycle

Time:

Approximate Dates:

a. Unit Introduction:

b. Objective:

1. Describe how forces deep inside the Earth and at the surface produce a slow cycle that builds, destroys, and changes the rocks in the crust.

D 21. Explain how internal energy of the Earth causes matter to cycle through the magma and the solid earth.

c. Essential Questions:

1. What characteristics do scientists use to classify rocks?
2. What is the role of plate tectonics in the rock cycle?

d. Essential Concepts

1. Scientists use mineral composition, texture, and how the rocks form to classify rocks into three main groups and a few subgroups.
2. The rock cycle is a series of processes on the Earth’s surface, crust and mantle that slowly change rocks from one kind to another. These processes are cooling and hardening, weathering, erosion, deposition, compaction, heat and pressure, and melting.
3. Plate movements start the rock cycle by helping to form magma, by causing faulting, folding and other motions to create igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic rocks.

e. Essential Skills

f. Vocabulary

1. mineral
2. rock
3. texture
4. igneous rock
5. sedimentary rock
6. metamorphic rock
7. heat
8. pressure
9. rock cycle

RFI: James Hutton