Social Studies Discussions... Coal and Dinosaurs and Diamonds

Yesterday my social studies class and I were reading the second half of a one page - double sided info sheet about coal. It took me 40 minutes to read through what would have taken me 10 minutes to read out loud normally.

Lately, my social studies class have been asking more and more questions. It usually happens about this time of year too which is really cool.

Questions from yesterday:

* So are dinosaur bones just mashed up under the ground to create the oil then? (Pretty much. This was my final answer after a VERY long explanation of the extinction of the dinosaurs and sediment over the years and friction of the earth and compression...)

* So peat can catch on fire? (YES! The original question stemmed from me asking them if they knew what it was and then me sharing my story about nan and the peat stories she has about the drive to Hamilton looking at the farmer's fields and saying that they'd catch on fire and that houses sink or lower because of the peat then students asked whether that was what was happening out in NGO.... and then that lead to me saying it could be due to the proximity of the lake and the rivers and the moisture content in the soil which led to a student asking - what lake? 😓)

* How do we make diamonds from coal then? (An answer I'm not too sure about yet... but know it has something to do with carbon...)

* Miss, do you know about the protest that happened with  ......? (Those side liner questions that I somehow managed to bring back into the discussion to make him feel involved but also not get the others angry for the irrelevance AGAIN from this student...)

* Miss, we should have a different election candidate on different days... so we can have more time with them...

*Miss, why do we always have to highlight the important information? It takes too long... ( To which I replied: If you have enough information to get started, then go for it. Other students already have and some have even finished their assessment already..... Wish this student would take more initiative.)

And then... we finished the coal info sheet and began our assessment.... finally.