Content Area: Science

 

Index: 5.8C Grade 8 CPI 2

 

Standard: 5.8 - Earth Science

 

Strand: C - Processes that Shape the Earth

 

Essential Questions

-  How do geologic events occurring today provide insight into Earth’s past?

 

Enduring Understandings

Earth’s components form systems. These systems continually interact at different rates of time, affecting the shape of the Earth’s surface regionally and globally.

 

Cumulative Progress Indicator: 2 - The student will show how successive layers of sedimentary rock and the fossils contained in them can be used to confirm the age, history, changing life forms, and geology of Earth.

 

Grade: 8

 

Instructional/Assessment Strategies:
• Interpreting the age, geologic history, and changing life forms, of a sample cross section of land
• Determining the relative ages of a geologic sequence of rocks, given a variety of fossils and the layers where they were found

 

Sample Test Items:
1. Which evidence would be most helpful to scientists in determining the age of Earth?
A. a comparison of Earth’s composition to other planets’ compositions
B. soils, fossils, and remnants of mountains
C. sediments, minerals, soils, and size of rocks
* D. fossil records, rock records, and layers of earth

2. Fossils of an animal that only survives in a tropical swamp are found in an arid (dry) section of northern Canada. Describe three changes that have occurred since the fossils were living organisms. Be sure to consider possible changes in life-forms, climate, environment, and geologic features.