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OpenSciEd Unit 6.4: Plate Tectonics & Rock Cycling Teacher Edition
Author(s): NATIONAL CENTER FOR
Edition: 1
Copyright: 2021
Pages: 352
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OpenSciEd Middle School science program addresses all middle school NGSS standards. This comprehensive science curriculum empowers students to question, design, investigate, and solve the world around them.
- Phenomenon Based - Centered around exploring phenomena or solving problems
- Driven by Student Questions - Storyline based on students’ questions and ideas
- Grounded in Evidence - Incremental building and revision of ideas based on evidence
- Collaborative - class and teacher figure out ideas together
- Equitable - Builds a classroom culture that values ideas and learning of all
The OpenSciEd model uses a storyline approach, introducing phenomena that anchors storylines developing disciplinary core ideas, concepts, and science/engineering practices. Students are encouraged to dive deep into key points and solve problems through five activities. Students kick off a unit of study, investigate questions, piece together the puzzle in investigations, and problematize the next set of questions to investigate.
Unit 6.4: What causes Earth’s surface to change?
Mountains move! And there are ocean fossils on top of Mt. Everest! In this plate tectonics and rock cycling unit, students come to see that the Earth is much more active and alive than they have thought before. The unit launches with documentation of a 2015 Himalayan earthquake that shifted Mt. Everest suddenly to the southwest direction. Students also discover that Mt. Everest is steadily moving to the northeast every year and getting taller as well. Students wonder what could cause an entire mountain to move during an earthquake.
Students investigate other locations that are known to have earthquakes and they notice landforms, such as mountains and ridges that correspond to earthquake patterns. They read texts, explore earthquake and landform patterns using a data visualization tool, and study GPS data at these locations. Students develop an Earth model and study mantle convection motion to explain how Earth’s surface could move from processes below the surface. From this, students develop models to explain different ways plates collide and spread apart, ultimately explaining how Mt. Everest could move all the time in one direction, and also suddenly, in a backward motion, during an earthquake. The unit ends with students using what they have figured out about uplift and erosion to explain how a fossil was found at Mt. Everest without having to dig for it.
Lesson 1: What is causing Mt. Everest and other mountains to move, grow, or shrink?
Lesson 2: How are earthquakes related to where mountains are located?
Lesson 3: How does what we find on and below Earth’s surface compare in different places? Lesson 4: What is happening to Earths’ surface and the material below it during an earthquake? Lesson 5: How does plate movement affect the land around mountains such as Mt. Everest?
Lesson 6: How could plate movement help us explain how Mt. Everest and other locations are changing in elevation?
Lesson 7: What happens at mountains where we see volcanic activity?
Lesson 8: What is occurring at locations where two plates are moving away from each other?
Lesson 9: What causes mountains to change?
Lesson 10: Where were Africa and South America in the past?
Lesson 11: Where were the other plates located in the distant past?
Lesson 12: Where did mountains that aren’t at plate boundaries today, like the Appalachians and Urals, come from?
Lesson 13: What causes mountains to shrink in elevation?
Lesson 14: How is there an exposed marine fossil on Mt. Everest? And, what other remaining questions from our Driving Question Board can we now answer?
NATIONAL CENTER FOR
OpenSciEd® was launched to improve the supply of and address the demand for high-quality, open-source, full course science instructional materials. The goals of OpenSciEd are to ensure any science teacher, anywhere, can access and download freely available, high quality, locally adaptable materials. Though the goal of providing full course materials is still a couple of years away, OpenSciEd is releasing six-week units of instruction as they are completed and externally evaluated as quality by Achieve’s Science Peer Review Panel. OpenSciEd classroom materials are an open education resource and therefore free to download, copy, use, and/or modify. You can download the instructional materials free of charge at Access Materials page on the OpenSciEd website. In an effort to lower barriers for all educators to use OpenSciEd, Kendall Hunt and OpenSciEd have partnered to sell high quality printed books, professional learning and lab kits.