Teaching examples, not student testimonials. The sample week, model notebook, and demonstration prompts illustrate the intended learning process; they do not report an enrolled student's results. Current program status and next steps.
Look inside the Geology pack.
No sign-up, no email required. Here is a sample week, a real rubric, a model lab-notebook entry, and a sample demonstration. These are the materials themselves, not a brochure. Every sample links to the full artifact it’s drawn from.
One week, two days on the rock.
The course meets two days a week for about two hours a day, across roughly 32 weeks. Here is week one of Unit 1 — Minerals: the student handles real minerals before a single property is memorized.
- Streak, luster & crystal habit
- Mohs hardness
- Cleavage vs. fracture
- Streak & dilute-acid test
- Bracket Mohs hardness
- Work a dichotomous key
How “mastered” is actually judged.
Every skill is scored at one of three levels against a published standard, without points or grading on a curve. Here is one criterion from the Minerals rubric — Mohs hardness, shown as a parent or guide would read it:
| Level | What it looks like — “Test Mohs hardness” |
|---|---|
| Developing | Guesses hardness by appearance; misuses the kit. |
| Proficient | Runs scratch tests but reverses which scratches which, or reports a single number instead of a range. |
| Mastery | Uses fingernail, copper penny, glass plate, and steel nail methodically to bracket hardness on the Mohs scale and reads it accurately (e.g. calcite ~3, quartz 7). |
Browse the full rubric set → · How this becomes an A–F grade →
The artifact a student builds, keeps, and defends.
The lab notebook is the primary record of a student's work, written in pen at the bench and explained aloud. Here is one model Field & Lab Day, showing how each section is recorded. Notice the crossed-out moment the fault was first read as a layer and the honest sources of error.
| Feature | Relative age |
|---|---|
| sandstone (bottom) | oldest |
| shale | next |
| limestone | next |
| fault cutting all three | youngest |
- Dated & titled entries
- A testable question & hypothesis
- Units on every number
- Significant figures, honestly reported
- Calculations shown, not just answers
- Written in pen during the lab; errors crossed out, not erased
- Error analysis with direction & size
The moment that can’t be faked.
Three times a year, a student performs and defends a demonstration, standing with their own work and reasoning aloud while an adult asks unscripted follow-ups. In the rock & mineral ID defense, they identify unknown specimens by streak, hardness, cleavage, luster, and the dilute-acid test — then defend each call out loud.
“Metallic-looking, but the streak came up greenish-black, not the reddish-brown I’d get from hematite — and it scratched glass, so it’s harder than 5.5. Brassy luster, cubic habit, that streak: pyrite, not gold. Gold would streak yellow and be far too soft to scratch glass.”
A passing answer from the rock & mineral ID defense — reasoning from streak, hardness, and habit, not reciting a definition.
The whole pack, ready for a binder.
Everything here is available to read online. Every rubric, checklist, and guide also has a print-ready packet version, formatted 8.5×11 for a clipboard or a three-ring binder. You assemble the student’s binder from the pack itself; there’s nothing else to buy to hold it in your hands. We’ve put them all in binder order on one page: Assemble the Geology binder →
Seen enough to start?
The whole Geology pack is open to read and print. Open it and begin, or ask us a question first. A real person answers.