Modeling Landform Formation Activity: 8 Hands-On Stations for Teaching How Wind, Water, and Ice Shape the Earth (TEKS 5.10C)

Chris Kesler · 8 min read

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep. That hole wasn't carved by a giant hammer or a meteor. It was carved by a river — the same Colorado River you can still see at the bottom — wearing away the rock one tiny grain at a time for about six million years. 5th graders look at a canyon photo and assume it's been there since the beginning of time. The lab they're about to run will show them otherwise.

That's TEKS 5.10C. It asks 5th graders to model and explain how landforms are created and change over time through weathering, erosion, and deposition by wind, water, and ice. They have to use "landforms," "canyon," "sand dune," "delta," and "U-shaped valley" with meaning. They have to predict what each force (wind, water, ice) does to a landscape over time.

The Modeling Landform Formation Station Lab for TEKS 5.10C hands every group a tray of sand and three tools. A straw becomes wind. A small pour of water becomes a river. A notecard dragged across the sand becomes a glacier. Each one moves the sand in a different way and creates a different landform pattern. By the end, kids can look at a photo of a sand dune, a delta, a canyon, or a U-shaped valley and tell you which force built it.

⏱ 1–2 class periods 📓 5th Grade Science 🧪 TEKS 5.10C 🎯 Built-in differentiation 💻 Print or Digital

8 hands-on stations for teaching landform formation

A station lab is a student-led activity where small groups rotate through 8 stations (plus a 9th challenge station for early finishers) at their own pace during one to two class periods. You become a facilitator instead of a lecturer. You walk around, spot-check, and break misconceptions while kids work through the rotation.

The Modeling Landform Formation Station Lab has four input stations (where students take in new information on canyons, deltas, sand dunes, and U-shaped valleys) and four output stations (where they show what they learned). Here's what's at each one.

📷 Image slot 1 — add screenshot

📷 Image slot 2 — add screenshot

4 input stations: how students learn landform formation

🎬 Watch It! —

A short YouTube video walks through the three forces that shape Earth's surface (wind, water, ice) and the landforms each one creates. Three questions on the answer sheet check the big ideas: what three forces break down, move, and deposit sediment (wind, water, ice); what landform forms when wind picks up and deposits sediment (sand dunes); and the difference between a V-shaped valley (river-carved) and a U-shaped valley (glacier-carved). The V-vs-U distinction is a small detail kids carry into the rest of the lab.

📖 Read It! —

A one-page passage called "How Earth's Surface Changes" opens with a family road trip to the Grand Canyon. The passage uses the Colorado River as the example for canyon formation through weathering and erosion, explains how a river meeting an ocean creates a delta through deposition, shows how wind builds sand dunes, and walks through glaciers carving U-shaped valleys with the bonus detail that glaciers can carry boulders and leave them as glacial till. Vocabulary is bolded throughout (landforms, canyon, sand dune, delta, U-shaped valley). Three multiple-choice questions follow, plus the vocabulary section. Comes in two reading levels (Dependent and Modified) plus a Spanish version.

🔬 Explore It! —

This is the heart of the lab and the part 5th graders will remember. Each group puts on safety goggles, fills a plastic tray with about 1 cm of sand, and runs three mini-experiments. Wind erosion: blow through a straw at one corner of the sand and watch a sand dune build up. Water erosion: tilt the tray, slowly pour water over the sand, and watch a small "river" carve a path while the sand gets deposited downstream. Ice erosion: drag a notecard across the remaining sand (the notecard is the glacier) and see how it scrapes and carries sand with it. Five questions tie observations to the three forces and to the difference between erosion and deposition. Kids who never volunteer in class won't shut up at this station.

💻 Research It! —

Eleven reference cards introduce landforms (canyons, deltas, sand dunes, U-shaped valleys), define weathering, erosion, and deposition with clear diagrams, and show real photos of each landform (the Grand Canyon, a sand dune, a U-shaped Alpine valley, and a braided river delta). Four questions tie it together: what three things can cause weathering, erosion, and deposition; the difference between the three processes; what landforms can be created by them; and whether kids can think of any landforms around their own house that were created by these processes (a great connect-to-home prompt).

📷 Featured station deep-dive — add screenshot of the Explore It! task card

4 output stations: how students show what they learned

📋 Organize It! —

A three-column landform sort. Nine photos of real landforms get sorted into Wind, Water, or Ice columns. Wind: a classic curving sand dune, a delicate stone arch in the desert, and the Coyote Buttes "Wave" sandstone pattern in Arizona. Water: a river-carved canyon, a sea stack rising out of the ocean, and the Grand Canyon. Ice: a green U-shaped Alpine valley, a glacier face calving into the sea, and a glacier-scarred mountainside. The arch and the sea stack are the tricky ones — both look similar but one was wind-eroded and one was water-eroded. Kids who really understand the difference between the three forces ace this sort.

🎨 Illustrate It! —

Students draw a quick sketch showing how TWO of the following landforms are created: canyon, delta, U-shaped valley, or sand dune. Each landform has to be labeled. The choose-two structure lets kids pick the two they understood best, which builds confidence, but it also forces them to commit to a specific force and a specific outcome. By the end, even the kids who never speak up in lecture have two labeled landforms they can explain.

✍️ Write It! —

Three open-ended questions in complete sentences. First, how wind, water, and ice help create landforms on Earth. Second, beaches are landforms that constantly change — how do erosion and deposition contribute to that change. Third, compare and contrast landforms formed by water (river deltas, beaches) vs. landforms formed by wind (sand dunes). The beach question is the bridge to lived experience — every kid who's been to a beach has watched waves move sand without realizing they were watching weathering, erosion, and deposition happen in real time.

📝 Assess It! —

Three multiple-choice questions plus a fill-in-the-paragraph that uses the five Read It! vocabulary words (landforms, canyon, sand dune, delta, U-shaped valley). The multiple choice covers which force creates a sand dune (wind); what huge landform glaciers carve out as they move (U-shaped valleys); and what three processes break down, move, and deposit sediments (weathering, erosion, and deposition). The paragraph weaves all five vocabulary words into a story about how each landform forms. If you're grading the lab, this is the easiest station to grade.

Bonus Challenge It! station for early finishers

🏆 Challenge It! —

Four optional extensions: write a public service announcement for an environmental engineering company explaining ways to prevent erosion damage in your community; research a major landform created by wind, water, or ice and write a paper with an image; create a travel brochure for deltas, canyons, and sand dunes with descriptions and famous examples; or create a wanted poster for wind, water, or ice (with description, landforms made, and damage caused). Requires teacher approval before they start.

How this fits into a complete Modeling Landform Formation unit

This Station Lab is the Explore day of our full Modeling Landform Formation Complete 5E Lesson for TEKS 5.10C. The complete two-week unit follows the 5E method of instruction and includes an Engage hook, the Modeling Landform Formation Station Lab for Explore, PowerPoint slides and interactive notebook pages for Explain, student choice projects to Elaborate, and an Evaluate assessment.

Most 5th-grade teachers grab the full 5E because the Station Lab lands hardest with the days around it. But if you just need a strong hands-on day on landforms, weathering, erosion, and deposition, the Station Lab on its own does the job.

Two options

Modeling Landform Formation 5E Lesson cover

Full 5E Lesson $13.20 Get the 5E Lesson

Modeling Landform Formation Station Lab cover

Just the Station Lab $7.20 Get the Station Lab

Materials needed to teach landform formation

Materials beyond what's in the download:

A small container of clean sand per group for the Explore It! station. A 10-pound bag of play sand from the hardware store covers six groups easily and lasts for years.
1 shallow plastic tray per group (a paint roller tray, the lid of a copy-paper box, or a disposable foil baking pan all work) to hold the sand for the wind, water, and ice experiments.
1 plastic straw per student for the wind erosion test. Keep these single-use, not shared (kids breathe in the straw as well as out, and you don't want a shared straw passing through a group).
1 small cup of water per group for the water erosion test. A 3-oz Dixie cup is the right amount.
1 index card per group for the ice erosion test (the card represents a moving glacier).
1 pair of safety goggles per student for the wind erosion part (blowing sand near eyes is a no-go without them).
Colored pencils or markers for the Illustrate It! station.
Pencils and the printed answer sheets (included)
A device with internet for the Watch It! station

Standard covered: Texas TEKS 5.10C —

Model and explain how landforms are created and change over time through weathering, erosion, and deposition by wind, water, and ice.

See the full standard breakdown →

Grade level: 5th grade Earth science

Time: One to two class periods (45–110 minutes total). Plan for two periods the first time you run a station lab.

Common student misconceptions this lab fixes

"Landforms have always looked the way they look now. The Grand Canyon has always been a canyon."
5th graders think of landforms as permanent because they've only been alive for 10 years and a canyon looks exactly the same to them this year as last year. The Read It! passage names it explicitly: "Wind, water, and ice are constantly reshaping our planet, making Earth into the dynamic planet we live on. Landforms that you can see today may be gone or drastically reshaped in the future!" The Explore It! station shows it on the tray in 60 seconds — blowing through a straw at the sand builds a dune that wasn't there before. Pouring water carves a tiny canyon. Dragging a notecard across the sand mimics a glacier. If they can build and reshape landforms on a tray in a minute, the Grand Canyon must have taken millions of years and is STILL changing. By the end, landforms are processes, not snapshots.
"Erosion and deposition are opposites. If one happens, the other doesn't."
5th graders treat erosion and deposition as on/off switches. They aren't. The Explore It! station shows them happening together every single time. When water flows down the tilted tray, it ERODES sand from the top end AND DEPOSITS that sand at the bottom end. Same water, same minute, both processes. The Research It! diagram makes it cleaner: erosion shows particles being carried away, deposition shows the SAME particles dropping off in a new location. The Write It! beach question forces them to write this in their own words: waves erode the beach on one side and deposit sand on the other, all day every day, which is why beaches are constantly changing shape. By the end, erosion and deposition are two ends of the same trip, not opposites.
"Glaciers are just big blocks of ice. They don't really move or do much."
Glaciers feel imaginary to 5th graders in most of Texas. They've never seen one. The Read It! passage and the Research It! cards make glaciers a real force: "The weight of all the snow causes the bottom of the glacier to turn into ice, which allows it to move. As glaciers move, they can break down large rocks and carve out large U-shaped valleys." The Explore It! notecard dragged across the sand mimics glacial motion at a tiny scale — sand scrapes away, sand gets pushed and dragged along. The Assess It! multiple choice closes it: which huge landform do glaciers carve out as they move? U-shaped valleys. Different from the V-shaped valleys that rivers carve, and one of the easiest "prove a glacier was here" clues a geologist can find.

What you get with this Modeling Landform Formation activity

📷 Inside-the-product — add screenshot of Read It passage or sample answer sheet

When you buy the Station Lab, you get a single download with everything you need:

Print version at two reading levels (Dependent for on-grade, Modified for additional support) plus a Spanish Read It! passage
Digital version as PowerPoint files (works in Google Slides too) at both levels — for 1:1 classrooms or Google Classroom
Teacher Directions and Answer Key for both versions, all keys included
Station task cards ready to print, laminate, and drop in baskets at each station
Reference cards for the Research It! station (11 cards covering landforms, weathering, erosion, deposition, sand dunes, U-shaped valleys, canyons, and deltas with real photos)
Sort cards for the Organize It! station (9 landform photos sorted into Wind, Water, and Ice columns)
Student answer sheets for each level

Tips for teaching landform formation in your 5th grade classroom

Two things make this lab go smoother the first time:

1. Goggles for everyone at the Explore It! station, no exceptions.

Blowing through a straw at a tray of sand sends sand grains exactly toward the kid sitting across from you. One stray grain in the eye and the station shuts down for 20 minutes. A class set of cheap safety goggles costs about $25 and lasts forever. Make the rule firm: no goggles, no Explore It! station. Kids who are eye-rolling about goggles change their tune the first time a partner accidentally blows sand toward them.

2. Put the wind step LAST in the rotation order.

If kids blow sand around first, the tray is uneven and the water-erosion step doesn't work as well. The official order on the task cards is wind, then water, then ice, but consider swapping it: water first (you need flat sand for the river carving), then ice (the notecard works on either flat or sloped sand), then wind LAST so it doesn't matter that the surface is now uneven. A small re-order saves you from kids saying "my river didn't work" when really their sand was already lumpy.

Get this Modeling Landform Formation activity

Modeling Landform Formation Station Lab for 5th grade Earth science — TEKS 5.10C

Buy the Station Lab — $7.20

Or if you want the full two-week experience with the Engage hook, Explain day, Elaborate extension, and Evaluate assessment all included:

Buy the full 5E Complete Lesson — $13.20

(Station Lab is included)

Frequently asked questions

What does TEKS 5.10C cover?

Texas TEKS 5.10C asks 5th grade students to model and explain how landforms are created and change over time through weathering, erosion, and deposition by wind, water, and ice. Students should be able to identify which force created a given landform (sand dune = wind, canyon = water, U-shaped valley = ice); explain how the three processes work together; and connect the slow change of landforms to weathering, erosion, and deposition on a small scale they can model on a tray.

What are the four landforms students need to know?

Canyons (carved by rivers like the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon), deltas (formed when rivers meet oceans and deposit sediment), sand dunes (built by wind moving and depositing sand), and U-shaped valleys (carved by glaciers as they grind their way down mountains). The Read It! passage and the Research It! cards walk through each one with photos.

How long does this Modeling Landform Formation activity take?

One to two class periods (45 to 110 minutes total). The Explore It! sand-tray station with three mini-experiments (wind, water, ice) takes the longest the first time through, so plan for two periods the first time you run a station lab. Once your class has the rotation routine down, most groups can finish all 8 stations in one period.

Is the sand mess really that bad?

A little. The trays catch most of it, but sand will get on the floor. Put down a paint drop cloth or a couple of bath towels under the Explore It! station to catch what spills, and have a small broom and dustpan ready. After all the rotations are done, dump the sand back into the original bag and you're set for next year. The mess is manageable; the lesson is too good to skip.

Can I use this in a 1:1 digital classroom?

Yes. The full digital version (PowerPoint or Google Slides) works in 1:1 classrooms and Google Classroom. Students drag the landform photos at the Organize It! station and type their answers. The Explore It! sand-tray activity is harder to digitize, but USGS and NASA both have free time-lapse videos of canyon formation, glacier movement, and dune migration that show the same processes on a planetary scale.