Luke Leads the Way

Remember when Luke's Uncle Gene visited out class to explain his opal mining and marketing business?  Well Luke's been learning how to recognize, cut and polish opals ever since.  He brought a pile of rocks containing various amounts and grades of opals to show what he's learned.

I quickly realized that Luke's collection and the way he'd grouped them was a perfect example of a project in classification I was about to assign the class.  Luke showed how he had taken his collection of rocks and divided them into two groups, then he showed how he was able to group or classify each group into smaller and smaller groups until he had identified each single stone. 

So now students will follow his lead and assemble a collection of ten items at home and classify them into smaller and smaller groups until all are named.  This system for recording  classification decisions is known as a Dichotomous Key.  Students are expected to bring their collections and written classification systems into class this Friday.  We will all go from collection to collection attempting to discover how each was classified.

Thanks Luke for leading the way.