Students who demonstrate understanding can: Construct an explanation based on evidence for how geoscience processes have changed Earth's surface at varying time and spatial scales.
Clarification statement: Emphasis is on how 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), and how many geoscience processes (such as earthquakes, volcanoes, and meteor impacts) usually behave gradually but are punctuated by catastrophic events. Examples of geoscience processes include surface weathering and deposition by the movements of water, ice, and wind. Emphasis is on geoscience processes that shape local geographic features, where appropriate.
Official wording from the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS Lead States, 2013). NGSS is a registered trademark of WestEd. Neither WestEd nor the lead states and partners that developed the NGSS were involved in the production of this page, and they do not endorse it. View on nextgenscience.org
Grand Canyon and a fresh landslide scar on a hillside are both products of the same planet at work, just at wildly different speeds and sizes. Students construct explanations, backed by evidence, for how geoscience processes change the surface over time scales from seconds to hundreds of millions of years and over areas from a single grain of sand to an entire mountain range.
Most change is gradual: rivers cut valleys a fraction of a millimeter per year, glaciers grind and carry rock, wind sculpts dunes, and plates creep a few centimeters per year, about as fast as fingernails grow. Yet that gradual change is interrupted by catastrophic events such as earthquakes, eruptions, floods and meteor impacts, which can remodel a landscape in minutes. Students learn to look at a landform and argue which processes made it, and over what scale of time and space.
Local landforms are ideal evidence. A nearby river delta, a road cut, a sand dune or a beach that changes after storms all let students connect the big ideas to places they know.
Weathering breaks rock into smaller pieces where it sits; erosion moves those pieces away. A canyon needs both, plus deposition somewhere downstream.
Students often assume a canyon must come from one huge flood. Steady erosion over millions of years can carve enormous valleys, even though floods can speed it up.
Mountains are still rising, coastlines are still shifting and rivers still move sediment every day. The surface is always changing.
Landslides, flash floods and beach erosion after storms change the land in hours or days, so some evidence can be observed directly.
A river is cutting down into rock at about 0.2 millimeters per year. Roughly how long would it take to carve a valley 400 meters deep, and what does the answer suggest?
Answer: About 2 million years, showing that tiny yearly changes add up to large landforms over geologic time.
Stream tables or trays of sand and soil let students model erosion and deposition and measure how changing slope or water flow changes the result. Comparing before-and-after photographs of coastlines, landslides or volcanic eruptions builds the idea of sudden change alongside slow change. Rate calculations help students appreciate the size of geologic time.
Assessment often asks students to explain the formation of a landform from a photo or map, or to classify a list of processes by speed and size.
Original questions written for this standard. Choose an option or type your answer, then press Check. Every question has a worked explanation.
Answer: B) Weathering breaks rock down; erosion moves the pieces
Weathering breaks rock in place; erosion is the transport of the broken material by water, ice, wind or gravity.
Answer: C) A landslide
A landslide can move huge amounts of rock and soil in minutes; the others act over long periods.
Answer: D) Deposition
When the river slows down at the ocean, it drops the sediment it was carrying, building up a delta.
Answer: 200 (also accepted: 200 meters, 200 m)
50 meters per year × 4 years = 200 meters.
Answer: B) A few centimeters per year
Plates move a few centimeters per year, about as fast as fingernails grow.
Answer: glaciers (also accepted: glacier, ice)
Moving glaciers scrape and widen valleys into a U shape, while rivers tend to cut V shapes.
Make observations and/or measurements to provide evidence of the effects of weathering or the rate of erosion by water, ice, wind, or vegetation.
Compare multiple solutions designed to slow or prevent wind or water from changing the shape of the land.
Develop a model to illustrate how Earth's internal and surface processes operate at different spatial and temporal scales to form continental and ocean-floor features.
A full lesson with slides, activities and an exit ticket on processes that reshape earth's surface, pitched to grades 6-8 and editable in PowerPoint or Google Slides.
Make a lesson →A printable, differentiated worksheet on MS-ESS2-2 with an answer key, ready in about a minute.
Make a worksheet →Turn processes that reshape earth's surface into a quiz students answer online that marks itself, with a class summary for you.
Build a test →Both large and small scales of time and space, from slow plate motions and mountain uplift to rapid landslides and microscopic chemical reactions.
Yes. The clarification statement emphasizes geoscience processes that shape local geographic features where appropriate.