Unit ‍Overview‍

In 6th grade, students begin working with indirect evidence to determine the causes of a changing Earth’s surface. They examine geoscience data to understand the processes and events that have shaped Earth’s history. An important aspect of the history of Earth is that geologic events and conditions have shaped the surface of the Earth. In the first unit, students explored some events that occur relatively quickly. This unit explores some that occur repeatedly to eventually change the Earth’s surface in dramatic ways.

Standards

Next Generation Science Standards – Middle School (NGSS-MS):

ESS2-2. Construct an explanation based on evidence for how geoscience processes have changed Earth’s surface at varying time and spatial scales.

Emphasize: how processes change Earth’s surface at time and spatial scales and how many geoscience processes (such as earthquakes, volcanoes, and meteor impacts) usually behave gradually but are punctuated by catastrophic events.

Core Ideas: The planet’s systems interact over scales that range from microscopic to global in size, and they operate over fractions of a second to billions of years. These interactions have shaped Earth’s history and will determine its future.

Examples: geoscience processes that shape local geographic features.

ESS2-3. Analyze and interpret data on the distribution of fossils and rocks, continental shapes, and seafloor structures to provide evidence of the past plate motions.

Core Ideas: Maps of ancient land and water patterns, based on investigations of rocks and fossils, make clear how Earth’s plates have moved great distances, collided, and spread apart.

Examples: similarities of rock and fossil types on different continents, the shapes of the continents (including continental shelves), and the locations of ocean structures (such as ridges, fracture zones, and trenches).

Science and Engineering:

• Analyze and interpret data to provide evidence for phenomena.
• Construct a scientific explanation based on valid and reliable evidence obtained from sources and the assumption that theories and laws that describe the natural world operate today as the did in the past and will continue to do so in the future.
• Science findings are frequently revised and/or reinterpreted based on new evidence.

Crosscutting concepts:

• Patterns in rates of change and other numerical relationships can provide information about natural and human designed systems.
• Time, space, and energy phenomena can be observed at various scales using models to study systems that are too large or too small.
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California Science Standards:

Earth Science Standards:

1a. Students know evidence of plate tectonics is derived from the fit of the continents; the location of earthquakes, volcanoes, and midocean ridges; and the distribution of fossils, rock types, and ancient climatic zones.

1c. Students know lithospheric plates that are the size of continents and oceans move at rates of centimeters per year in response to movements in the mantle.

1e. Students know major geologic events, such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and mountain building result from plate movements.

Investigation and Experimentation Standards:

7e. Recognize whether evidence is consistent with a proposed explanation.

7f. Read a topographic map and a geologic map for evidence provided on the maps and construct and interpret a simple scale map.

7h. Identify changes in natural phenomena over time without manipulating the phenomena (e.g., a tree limb, a grove of trees, a stream, a hillslope).