Lesson Ideas for 8 th Grade Earth Science TESSE 2009 Pat Grant The clocks in rocks.

Lesson Ideas for 8th Grade Earth ScienceTESSE 2009

Pat Grant

The clocks in rocks

2. Earth is 4.6 billion years old 2.1 Earth’s rocks and other materials

provide a record of its history ▪ Fossil record and radiometric dating

2.7 Over Earth’s vast history, both gradual and catastrophic processes have produced enormous changes

The Early Earth and Plate Tectonics video 5 minute excerpt

▪ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDqskltCixA

Which Rock is Older?

http://serc.carleton.edu/teacherprep/resources/activities/relative-dating.html

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Relative Age of Layered Rocks

Relative Ages of Layered Rocks in the Grand CanyonVisit Geology of National Parks: 3-D Tours Featuring Park Geology at http://3dparks.wr.usgs.gov/index.html. Students will need 3D glasses.

RELATIVE DATING OF GEOLOGIC MATERIALSBy Steve Mattox July 2005

http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/fosrec/BarBar.html

A RELATIVE DATING ACTIVITYMARSHA BARBER and DIANA SCHEIDLE BARTOS

Who’s on First?

Fossil record tells a story Record

Using popcorn to simulate radioactive decay

http://serc.carleton.edu/quantskills/activities/popcorn.html

Popping popcorn in your class is an excellent way to illustrate both the spontaneity and irreversible change associated with radioactive decay. It helps students to understand the unpredictability of decay.

Jennifer Wenner, University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, wenner@uwosh.edu

http://www.fifeschools.com/cjh/staff/laker/documents/radiodating.pdf

Also check out http://www.sciencenetlinks.com/lessons.php?DocID=178

NSTA--practical and well-designed lesson plans

NSTAwww.scilink.orgESS -018

http://books.google.com/books?id=bOSaEwyZqzAC&lpg=PA120&ots=xZtMwkWSiV&dq=drilling%20through%20the%20ages&pg=PA122#v=onepage&q=&f=false

Lesson 1 - What is stratigraphy?

Lesson 2 - Correlation Activity

Lesson 3 -Geologic Time

Lesson 4 - Earth’s History - Lab

Lesson 5 - Environments through Timehttp://msnucleus.org/membership/html/jh/earth/stratigraphy/index.html

online tutorial activity

Sample Online ActivityRock Correlation

http://msnucleus.org/membership/html/jh/earth/stratigraphy/index.html

Correlate the appropriate rock units by drawing a line between the cores.

You are given one clue in defining bed "A." Color the appropriate units and name them logically.

Make a legend so your teacher can easily see the results.

Describe what units are missing in section 3.

http://earth-time.org/k12.html

http://www.agiweb.org/education/pd/earthcomm-structure.html

http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/time/activities/11585.html

Randall M Richardson University of Arizona, Department of Geosciences

After having talked about the geologic time scale, get two volunteers from the class to hold a rope that is 50 feet long. Say that one end is the beginning of the Earth (4.6 billion years ago), and the other is today. Then give out 16 clothes pins and ask various students to put a clothes pin on the 'time line' at various 'geologic events'. Throughout the activity you can have students calculate percentages of Earth History for major geologic events, and compare it to their own ages. On their time scale, the

dinosaurs died only about two 'months' ago! The exercise is very effective at letting them get a sense of how long geologic time is, and how 'recently' some major geologic

events happened when you consider a time scale that is the age of the earth.

Geologic Time Scale