Middle School Inquiry Lab on Earth's Changing Surface
In this lab students will make observations and conclusions about how Earth’s surface has changed over time by weathering, erosion, deposition, earthquakes, and volcanoes.
Each inquiry lab will contain an essential question that will drive the lesson and make students think. For this lesson, the essential question is:
- How does Earth’s surface change?
BACKGROUND INFORMATION AND MATERIALS LIST:
Students will begin the lab by reading the essential question and background information. This can be done individually, as lab groups, or as a whole class. If you consider lab groups, you also might include some type of whole class formative checks before digging into the lab.
Materials List:
- Changing Earth Pictures (provided with inquiry lab)
PROCEDURE:
During this portion of the lab, students will make observations while looking over three Earth landform pictures. Using their lab sheet, students will read over what specific information to look for and answer a series of questions about each picture presented. The second portion of this inquiry lab will ask students to explain the process (identify the cause of the effect), speed, and provide an example of ways that help the Earth change its surface.
CONCLUSION
Students will go back to the essential question and write a CER (Claim, Evidence, Reasoning) to conclude the lab. Once completed, students will reflect back on their learning by answering the following questions:
- How are volcanoes and earthquakes related?
- How are weathering, erosion, and deposition related?
- What kinds of changes can you see in the area you live in? Give examples.
MODIFIED AND INDEPENDENT INQUIRY VERSIONS
All of the Kesler Science inquiry labs come with three different modification levels. Each lab is differentiated using the icons below.
STANDARDS ALIGNMENT
NGSS: MS-ESS2-2 – Construct an explanation based on evidence for how geoscience process have changed Earth’s surface at varying time and spatial scales.
