Soil Investigation

This week I implemented an introductory lesson that looked at soil profiles.  Like an excited child I decided to take 40 unknown students outside to dig (What am I really thinking sometimes???).  For this to happen I had to enlist the help of several of my colleagues who stood watch over several different digging stations (not sure what I owe them).  However, the students really enjoyed going outside and digging in the dirt.  This dirt profile that the students collected served as their initial model of the different layers that can be found in soil.  Using this as a discussion piece students were able to build their knowledge of how soil is formed and what each layer means.  To increase students understanding (and my frustration) I decided that not only did we need to dig but, we needed to inspect our soil profile, draw an illustration of the profile (in our handy dandy IAN notebooks), and share this information with the class.  As if this was not enough I then thought it would be neat to create a foldable of the different soil layers.  This modeling activity provided students with another concrete example of the different layers of the soil.  Unfortunately, as you can probably already tell, we were not able to get through the whole lesson.  The class was halfway through the foldable when the bell rang.  However, I can say that the use of models for this activity helped students to see that soil is comprised of different distinct layers.  Without these hands-on approaches, I believe that students would have had a more difficult time picturing the concept of soil horizons.  

Below is an example of student work.