Unpacked Content
Scientific and Engineering Practices
Obtaining, Evaluating, and Communicating Information
Crosscutting Concepts
Stability and Change
Knowledge
Students know:
- Plate movements are responsible for most continental and ocean-floor features and for the distribution of most rocks and minerals within Earth's crust.
Skills
Students are able to:
- Develop the claim based on evidence that constructive and destructive processes shape Earth's land features.
- Identify and describe evidence supporting the claim, such as specific internal processes like volcanism, mountain building or tectonic uplift as causal agents in building up Earth's surface over time; specific surface processes, like weathering and erosion as causal agents in wearing down Earth's surface over time.
Understanding
Students understand that:
- The appearance of land features and sea-floor features are a result of both constructive forces and destructive mechanisms.
- Earth's systems, being dynamic and interacting, cause feedback effects that can increase or decrease the original changes.
Vocabulary
Students:
- From a given explanation, identify the claims, the evidence and the reasoning that will require evaluation.
- Based on evidence, evaluate the mode and ease with which energy moves from one Earth system to another.
- Evaluate explanations for changes in Earth's mean temperature via changes in the energy budget of Earth's systems.
- Research and compile a set of explanations both supporting and disavowing the impact of human activities on the increase of carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere.
