New Products: Earth Science

 I have been working on the NGSS standards for middle school on Earth's Systems and have almost finished! Here's what I have been putting together so far:

MS-ESS2-2: Weathering and Erosion Shores (Geologic Processes)

In this activity, students examine the geologic process of weathering and erosion on a beach. They model two types of weathering, research, and sort cards on types of weathering to determine rates of geological processes. The final piece is a CER over whether this process is rapid or gradual.

MS-ESS2-3: Pangea Puzzle, Fossils, and Plate Movement Activity

Students will examine plate movement since Pangea using the placement of fossils and the shape of landmasses. First, they will attempt to piece together Pangea. With research, they will make predictions and draw the placement of current plate boundaries and plate tectonics. A claim-evidence-reasoning is used to assess understanding of the objective.

MS-ESS2-4: Mini-Water Cycle Activity

Students build and draw models of the water cycle, including how energy and gravity influence the process. To create their models, students conduct research on these pieces. Finally, there are two CER questions that students can choose to respond to demonstrate their understanding of the objective.

MS-ESS2-5: Weather Watch Activity

Students collect data over five or more days to predict weather patterns based on symbols and air masses. At the end of the data collection, they research what the symbols on a weather map indicate. The end assessment is a claim-evidence-reasoning to predict the weather for a fictitious location based on the weather symbol.

I am still tweaking the 2-6 until it looks great, but it's almost there!