TEKS Addressed: 8.1A, 8.2A, 8.2C, 8.2E, 8.3A, 8.3B, 8.3C, 8.3D, 8.4A, 8.4B, 8.6C, 8.9A, 8.9B, 8.9C

Introduction

This unit bundles Student Expectations that address plate tectonics, topographic maps, and satellite views. Earth’s crustal features change over time as a result of the unbalanced forces from plate tectonics, as well as the processes of weathering, erosion, and deposition. Topographic maps and satellite images may be used as tools to interpret Earth’s features and predict future changes to these features.

Prior to this Unit

• Grade 6

  • 6.9A – Investigate methods of thermal energy transfer, including conduction, convection, and radiation.

  • 6.10A – Build a model to illustrate the compositional and mechanical layers of Earth, including the inner core, outer core, mantle, crust, asthenosphere, and lithosphere.

  • 6.10B – Classify rocks as metamorphic, igneous, or sedimentary by the processes of their formation.

  • 6.10C – Identify the major tectonic plates, including Eurasian, African, Indo-Australian, Pacific, North American, and South American.

  • 6.10D – Describe how plate tectonics causes major geological events such as ocean basin formation, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and mountain building.

• Grade 7

  • 7.8B – Analyze the effects of weathering, erosion, and deposition on the environment in ecoregions of Texas.

During this Unit

Students use scientific practices and a variety of tools to investigate and describe the historical development of evidence that supports plate tectonic theory, including contributing scientists. They demonstrate how plate tectonics relate to crustal feature formation and investigate and describe how Newton’s laws apply to Earth’s tectonic activities. In this unit, students' prior knowledge of convection can now be applied to tectonic plate movement. In addition, they interpret topographic maps and satellite views to identify land and erosional features and predict how these features may be reshaped by weathering. Additionally, students communicate and discuss their observations and record and organize data in their notebooks. Furthermore, students analyze and interpret information to construct reasonable explanations based on evidence from their investigations and communicate valid conclusions (supported by collected data). Students continue to demonstrate safe practices as outlined in Texas Education Agency-approved safety standards and consider environmentally appropriate and ethical practices with resources during investigations.

After this Unit

Students may continue their study of Earth science concepts in high school courses.

Additional Notes

STAAR Note

The Grade 8 Science STAAR will directly assess Student Expectations in the following Reporting Categories:

• Reporting Category 3: Earth and Space

  • 8.9A – Supporting Standard

  • 8.9B – Readiness Standard

  • 8.9C – Readiness Standard

Research

“By the end of the 8th grade, students should know that:

• Heat flow and movement of material within the earth cause earthquakes and volcanic eruptions and create mountains and ocean basins. 4C/M1

• Some changes in the earth's surface are abrupt (earthquakes and volcanic eruptions) while other changes happen very slowly (uplift and wearing down of mountains). 4C/M2a

• Matching coastlines and similarities in rock types and life forms suggest that today's continents are separated parts of what was long ago a single continent. 4C/M9** (SFAA)

• The outer layer of the earth—including both the continents and the ocean basins—consists of separate plates. 4C/M11** (BSL)

• The earth's plates sit on a dense, hot, somewhat melted layer of the earth. The plates move very slowly, pressing against one another in some places and pulling apart in other places, sometimes scraping alongside each other as they do. Mountains form as two continental plates, or an ocean plate and a continental plate, press together. 4C/M12** (BSL)

• There are worldwide patterns to major geological events (such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and mountain building) that coincide with plate boundaries. 4C/M13** (BSL)”

American Association for the Advancement of Science. (2009). Benchmarks on-line. Retrieved from http://www.project2061.org/publications/bsl/online/index.php?chapter=4#C2.

On this trip he befriended German climatologist Wladimir Köppen, who became his mentor, and later married Köppen’s daughter, Elsa, in 1913. He made three more expeditions to Greenland, in 1912–13, 1929, and 1930. He taught meteorology at Marburg and Hamburg and was a professor of meteorology and geophysics at the University of Graz from 1924 to 1930. He died during his last expedition to Greenland in 1930.

Like certain other scientists before him, Wegener became impressed with the similarity in the coastlines of eastern South America and western Africa and speculated that those lands had once been joined together. About 1910 he began toying with the idea that in the late Paleozoic Era (which ended about 252 million years ago) all the present-day continents had formed a single large mass, or supercontinent, which had subsequently broken apart. Wegener called this ancient continent Pangaea. Other scientists had proposed such a continent but had explained the separation of the modern world’s continents as having resulted from the subsidence, or sinking, of large portions of the supercontinent to form the Atlantic and Indian oceans. Wegener, by contrast, proposed that Pangaea’s constituent portions had slowly moved thousands of miles apart over long periods of geologic time. His term for this movement was die Verschiebung der Kontinente (“continental displacement”), which gave rise to the term continental drift.