Carolina Biological_Discover Carolina–August 2024
 
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High School

Earth's Systems

 

Students who demonstrate understanding can:

Performance Expectations
 

 

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. HS-ESS2-1

Clarification Statement and Assessment Boundary

Clarification Statement: Emphasis is on how the appearance of land features (such as mountains, valleys, and plateaus) and sea-floor features (such as trenches, ridges, and seamounts) are a result of both constructive forces (such as volcanism, tectonic uplift, and orogeny) and destructive mechanisms (such as weathering, mass wasting, and coastal erosion).

Assessment Boundary: Assessment does not include memorization of the details of the formation of specific geographic features of Earth’s surface.

Science and Engineering Practices

Developing and Using Models

Modeling in 9–12 builds on K–8 experiences and progresses to using, synthesizing, and developing models to predict and show relationships among variables between systems and their components in the natural and designed world(s).

Develop a model based on evidence to illustrate the relationships between systems or between components of a system. (HS-ESS2-1)

Disciplinary Core Ideas

ESS2.A:  Earth Materials and Systems

Earth’s systems, being dynamic and interacting, cause feedback effects that can increase or decrease the original changes. (HS-ESS2-1) (Note: This Disciplinary Core Idea is also addressed by HS-ESS2-2.)

ESS2.B:  Plate Tectonics and Large-Scale System Interactions

Plate tectonics is the unifying theory that explains the past and current movements of the rocks at Earth’s surface and provides a framework for understanding its geologic history. (HS-ESS2-1)

Plate movements are responsible for most continental and ocean-floor features and for the distribution of most rocks and minerals within Earth’s crust. (HS-ESS2-1)

Crosscutting Concepts

Stability and Change

Change and rates of change can be quantified and modeled over very short or very long periods of time. Some system changes are irreversible. (HS-ESS2-1)

Common Core State Standards Connections

ELA/Literacy
  • SL.11-12.5 - Make strategic use of digital media (e.g., textual, graphical, audio, visual, and interactive elements) in presentations to enhance understanding of findings, reasoning, and evidence and to add interest. (HS-ESS2-1)
Mathematics
  • HSN-Q.A.1 - Use units as a way to understand problems and to guide the solution of multi-step problems; choose and interpret units consistently in formulas; choose and interpret the scale and the origin in graphs and data displays. (HS-ESS2-1)
  • HSN-Q.A.2 - Define appropriate quantities for the purpose of descriptive modeling. (HS-ESS2-1)
  • HSN-Q.A.3 - Choose a level of accuracy appropriate to limitations on measurement when reporting quantities. (HS-ESS2-1)
  • MP.2 - Reason abstractly and quantitatively. (HS-ESS2-1)
  • MP.4 - Model with mathematics. (HS-ESS2-1)