Teachers' Guide

The Website

The Rock Cycle is one of the fundamental cycles of nature that enables our planet to support life.

The aim of this website is to provide a coherent explanation of the many processes involved in the Rock Cycle, in a manner that will be interesting and accessible to students studying the topic as part of their science courses. Although based around the English National Curriculum for Science at Key Stage 3, the site does extend beyond the requirements of that curriculum and should also be useful to science students at higher levels, as well as to teachers and to any casual browsers with an interest in how our planet works.

The content of the site has been written by members of the Earth Science Teachers’ Association in co-operation with the Geological Society of London. Factual content has been carefully checked (be warned that some science textbooks contain errors!) and a Glossary of terms is provided.

Feedback from teachers on the content and presentation of this website would be especially appreciated (please mail the Education Officer, Geological Society of London, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London W1J 0BG).

If you feel that this site is helpful to your students, please link to it from your school website, as this helps our “Google rating”

Experiments and Demonstrations, Student Activities and Structured Answer Questions:

We have included a number of experiments and demonstrations, many based on earlier work by ESTA members and the work of the ESEU at Keele (see Links page), to whom we express thanks. These have been set out under three separate headings: Igneous Processes, Sedimentary Processes and Metamorphism & Deformation. Experiments have been set out as worksheets with additional teacher/technician notes where appropriate, downloaded as pdf files.

As well as a series of short multiple choice tests associated with the web pages there is a set of copyable “SAT” questions, written by KS3 examiners, together with some Extension questions for able students. Once again, feedback from teachers on the usefulness of resources will be gladly received.