Issues in Earth Science
Eww, There s Some Geology in my Fiction!
Issue 17, June 2023
Teacher Resources
Suggestions for Activities and Discussions to accompany Readings of
And the Stones Shall Cry Out by Wendy Nikel
Lesson Objective: Explore and compare the attributes of living things and non-living things. Apply the reasoning of cause and effect to explain how an attribute of a living thing may be present in things traditionally classified as non-living.
Science and Engineering Practices (SEP) addressed: Constructing Explanations; Obtaining, Evaluating, and Communicating Information
Crosscutting Concepts (CC) addressed: Cause and Effect
Overview of the Lesson
The conflict in the story rests on whether the life-like characteristics of the stone samples taken from the planet Cambusca indicate that the stones are alive or not. That question How can we tell if something is alive or not? is more difficult to answer than you might expect. The activities in this lesson are designed to lead students through how they might define life, how science defines life (at least for now) and how non-living things can have attributes of life.
Movement is a characteristic that children often notice as indicative of life, so the lesson ends with a look at the sailing rocks of Death Valley. Their movement has a non-living explanation which took decades to figure out. Students parse the current scientific explanation into a series of cause-and-effect relationships.
ACTIVITY 1 What do the students already think? Is it alive?
1. Working alone, have each student classify the following things as either alive or not alive and why. Then ask students to develop a list of 4-5 characteristics that must be present for something to be alive.
a. rocks, grass, water, a bird, a butterfly, a star (like our sun), clouds, lava, a house, a car, a cat, lightning, a snake, a muscle cell, a river, an ocean, a whale, a fish, an active volcano, a rusty bike, fire, a human
2. Working in groups of 3-4, have students discuss their reasons for each person s classification decisions.
3. Then, each group develops a list of 4-5 characteristics that they think must be true for an object to be classified as alive.
4. Moderate a large group discussion and compile a class list of characteristics.
5. Readings for further information to help you guide your students:
a. How can we tell if something is alive or not? (https://astrobiology.nasa.gov/education/alp/alive-or-not/)
b. It s Alive! I think . . . (https://scholarworks.uni.edu/istj/vol34/iss1/3/)
ACTIVITY 2 Evaluating claims: alive or not?
1. Assign one of the following claims to each small group of students (3-4 people).
a. Fire is alive because it moves and gives off heat.
b. Stars are alive because they have a life cycle.
c. A caterpillar is not alive because it can t talk.
d. Paricutin is a small cinder cone volcano that grew to be 1300 feet tall in a matter of years. The volcano is alive.
e. A volcano is alive because it can grow over time.
f. A tree can t move so it is not alive.
g. Humans are alive because they can reproduce and make baby humans.
2. Each group discusses if they agree or disagree with the claim and why they think what they think. Encourage students to be using their list of criteria developed in activity 1.
3. Each group writes out how their item does or does not meet the alive criteria.
4. Each group presents their ideas to the whole class. To encourage student-to-student discussion, arrange students in a circle so they can see and hear each other.
5. End the discussion with Do you think the stones of Cambusca alive? What else would want to find out before you decide for sure?
ACTIVITY 3: The Sailing Stones of Death Valley
1. Start
with this photo of the sailing stones of Death Valley. Have students to look at
the photo and ask themselves: What do I notice? What do I wonder about? Individuals
jot thoughts down and share with class. 
2. Students read the article (and watch the video?) The Sailing Rocks of Death Valley which details observations that rocks were really moving. (How Do Death Valley s Sailing Stones Move Themselves Across the Desert? | Travel| Smithsonian Magazine or What moves the sailing stones of Death Valley? | Earth | EarthSky) Students use the article s information to write out a chain of events (cause and effect) to explain how the Death Valley rocks moved, even though the rocks themselves weren t alive.
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The Teacher Resources for And the Stones Shall Cry Out are written by Russ and Mary Colson, authors of Learning to Read the Earth and Sky.
Return to And the Stones Shall Cry Out by Wendy Nikel
Return to Eww, There s Some Geology in My Fiction.
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