Friday, March 4, 2016

We are ending a week and the first section of the Earth History unit.  When students return on Monday, we will do the other section that involves the study of geological changes of the Earth.  The outermost layer of the lithosphere, known as the Earth's Crust, is in a constant state of change.  We will be covering the two types of changes:  rapid and slow.  

We will begin with slow changes to the Earth's surface since it is a review of the Rock Cycle unit earlier in the year.  We will review weathering, erosion, deposition and how they shape and reshape our world.  We will also cover glaciers since they too change the world over a very long period of years.

The other part of this section will involve rapid changes such as earthquakes, volcanoes, landslides, avalanches, meteorites, etc.  All of this reinforces the ongoing concept that we live in a universe that won't sit still!

Students also finished up and presented their prehistoric animal that they created.  I found it very interesting (again) at how creative they are!  It is also funny how some of these animals were nearly invincible.

Below is the warm-up for today (plus the answer key) but no audio due to too many .mp3 files.

At the end of each class, I showed them the following video.  It ties in STEM with a review of kinetic energy.  It is a fascinating hand-cranked machine that uses 2,000 marbles to make the sounds.