SC15.6.5 | ALEX

Science (2015) Grade(s): 6

SC15.6.5
Use evidence to explain how different geologic processes shape Earth’s history over widely varying scales of space and time (e.g., chemical and physical erosion; tectonic plate processes; volcanic eruptions; meteor impacts; regional geographical features, including Alabama fault lines, Rickwood Caverns, and Wetumpka Impact Crater).

Unpacked Content

Scientific and Engineering Practices

Constructing Explanations and Designing Solutions

Crosscutting Concepts

Scale, Proportion, and Quantity

Knowledge

Students:

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.
Processes change Earth's surface at time and spatial scales that can be large (such as slow plate motions or the uplift of large mountain ranges) or small (such as rapid landslides or microscopic geochemical reactions).
Many geologic processes that change Earth's features (such as earthquakes, volcanoes, and meteor impacts) usually behave gradually but are punctuated by catastrophic events.
The composition of Earth's layers and their properties affect the surface of Earth.
Geologic processes that have changed Earth's features include events like surface weathering, erosion, and deposition by the movements of water, ice, and wind.
Surface weathering, erosion, movement, and the deposition of sediment range from large to microscopic scales (e.g., sediment consisting of boulders and microscopic grains of sand, raindrops dissolving microscopic amounts of minerals).
Water's movements—both on the land and underground—cause weathering and erosion, which change the land's surface features and create underground formations.
The motion of the Earth's plates produces changes on a planetary scale over a range of time periods from millions to billions of years. Evidence for the motion of plates can explain large-scale features of the Earth's surface (e.g., mountains, distribution of continents) and how they change.
Catastrophic changes can modify or create surface features over a very short period of time compared to other geologic processes, and the results of those catastrophic changes are subject to further changes over time by processes that act on longer time scales (e.g., erosion of a meteor crater).

Skills

Students are able to:

Articulate a statement that relates a given phenomenon to a scientific idea, including that geologic processes have shaped the Earth's history over widely varying scales of space and time.
Identify the corresponding timescales for each identified geoscience process.
Identify and use multiple valid and reliable sources of evidence to construct an explanation that changes occur on very large or small spatial and/or temporal scales.
Use reasoning to connect the evidence and support an explanation for how geologic processes have changed the Earth's surface at a variety of temporal and spatial scales.

Understanding

Students understand that:

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.
A given surface feature is the result of a broad range of geoscience processes occurring at different temporal and spatial scales.
Surface features will continue to change in the future as geoscience processes continue to occur.

Vocabulary

Evidence
Geology
Geologic process
Scale
System
Microscopic
Global
Time scale
Spatial scale
Uplift
Landslide
Geochemical reaction
Earthquake
Catastrophic event
Composition
Property
Deposition
Sediment
Surface features
Underground formations
Erosion
Chemical erosion
Physical erosion
Tectonic plates
Tectonic plate processes
Continent
Continental drift theory
Volcano
Volcanic eruption
Meteor
Meteor impact
Impact crater
Weathering
Fault line
Cavern

Aligned Learning Resources

Volcanoes StudyJam

Weathering and Erosion StudyJam

Using a Hyperdoc to Explore Volcanic Activity