HS-ESS2-1

SCUSD NGSS Curriculum Guide

**HS-ESS2-1: Develop a model to illustrate how Earth’s internal and surface processes operate at different spatial and temporal scales to form continental and ocean-floor features.** [Clarification Statement: Emphasis is on how the appearance of land features (such as mountains, valleys, and plateaus) and sea-floor features (such as trenches, ridges, and seamounts) are a result of both constructive forces (such as volcanism, tectonic uplift, and orogeny) and destructive mechanisms (such as weathering, mass wasting, and coastal erosion).] [//Assessment Boundary: Assessment does not include memorization of the details of the formation of specific geographic features of Earth’s surface.//]

Science Background for the Teacher:
Plate Tectonics is the unifying theory that explains the past and current movements of the rocks at the Earth's surface and provides a coherent account of its geological history. The lighter and less dense continents are embedded in heavier and denser upper-mantle rocks, and together they make up the moving tectonic plates of the lithosphere.

Key Vocabulary:

 * || volcanism || trenches || plateaus || mass wasting || outer core || continental crust || transitional zone ||
 * || tectonic uplift || ridges || weathering || plate tectonics || lower mantle || oceanic crust ||  ||
 * || orogeny || seamounts || erosion || inner core || upper mantle || lithosphere ||  ||

Possible Assessments (formative and/or summative):
Make poster or power point presentation on constructive forces and destructive mechanisms

Key Student Activity:
newspaper collection of current large scale erosion events stream table activity rates of chemical weathering using math models

Key Teacher Demo/Activity:
short clips of real storms, land slides, volcano eruptions

Common Student Misconceptions:
Geological time (that everything is changing over vast amount of times)

Things to Avoid/Correct:
The constructive forces and destructive mechanisms are continually changing the form of the Earth (mountains are not staying still)

====Other Resources (text, video, simulations, activities, models, etc..): ====

Nova Yellowstone DVD