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Grade 2. In the unit Earth Materials, students explore water, rocks, sand, soil, landforms, and bodies of water. Lessons are structured in 30-minute class sessions, making it easy to fit science into your day. The Earth Materials 1-Use Unit Kit with Literacy Set includes a teacher's guide, a set of 24 student readers, a license to access online digital resources, and enough supplies and apparatus to teach the unit once to a class of up to 24 students.

Grade 2. In 6 lessons spanning 28 class sessions, the Building Blocks of Science® 3D unit Earth Materials helps students explore water, rocks, sand, soil, landforms, and bodies of water. Building Blocks of Science® 3D lessons are structured in 30-minute class sessions, making it easy to fit science into your day. The Earth Materials 1-Use Unit Kit with Literacy Set includes a teacher's guide (item #514542), 18 on-grade student readers (item #514503), 6 below-grade student readers (item #514503BGR), a license for the teacher and students to access online digital resources, and enough supplies and apparatus to teach the unit once to a class of up to 24 students.

Along with hands-on learning, this Building Blocks of Science® 3D unit also provides digital resources to enhance the classroom experience. These components offer an additional method of delivering content, particularly for classrooms with consistent access to computers or tablets. Digital components include digital teacher's guide, simulations, digital literacy reader, interactive whiteboard activities, interactive student investigation sheets, and assessment. All digital resources for Building Blocks of Science® 3D are accessible at CarolinaScienceOnline.com.

Unit Summary
Earth's surface is constantly changing. In the six lessons of Earth Materials, students will investigate how natural materials such as water, minerals, rocks, and soil are key parts of Earth's surface and the materials that make landforms from canyons to mountains. Usually, changes to landforms happen over a long period of time; however, some agents of change, such as volcanoes and floods, can cause landforms to change more quickly. Students explore these concepts through investigation, discussion, and problem-solving. Students make observations and predictions, analyze and graph data, develop claims supported with evidence and reasoning, and use the engineering design process.

Next Generation Science Standards*
The Building Blocks of Science® 3D unit Earth Materials (©2019) integrates process skills as defined by the Next Generation Science Standards.

Performance Expectations

• 2-ESS1-1: Use information from several sources to provide evidence that Earth events can occur quickly or slowly.
• 2-ESS2-1: Compare multiple solutions designed to slow or prevent wind or water from changing the shape of the land.
• 2-ESS2-2: Develop a model to represent the shapes and kinds of land and bodies of water in an area.
• 2-ESS2-3: Obtain information to identify where water is found on Earth and that it can be solid or liquid.
• 2-PS1-1: Plan and conduct an investigation to describe and classify different kinds of materials by their observable properties.
• K-2-ETS1-1: Ask questions, make observations, and gather information about a situation people want to change to define a simple problem that can be solved through the development of a new or improved object or tool.
• K-2-ETS1-2: Develop a simple sketch, drawing, or physical model to illustrate how the shape of an object helps it function as needed to solve a given problem.

Disciplinary Core Ideas

• ESS1.C: History of the Planet
• ESS2.A: Earth Materials and Systems
• ESS2.B: Plate Tectonics and Large-Scale System Interactions
• ESS2.C: The Roles of Water in Earth's Surface Processes
• PS1.A: Structures and Properties of Matter
• ETS1.C: Optimizing the Design Solution

Science and Engineering Practices

• Developing and Using Models
• Planning and Carrying Out Investigations
• Constructing Explanations and Designing Solutions
• Obtaining, Evaluating, and Communicating Information

Crosscutting Concepts

• Patterns
• Stability and Change

Common Core State Standards
Language Arts

• L.2.4: Vocabulary Acquisition and Use
• L.2.5: Vocabulary Acquisition and Use
• L.2.6: Vocabulary Acquisition and Use
• RF.2.3: Phonics and Word Recognition
• RI.2.1: Key Ideas and Details
• RI.2.3: Key Idea and Details
• RI.2.4: Craft and Structure
• RI.2.5: Craft and Structure
• RI.2.7: Integration of Knowledge and Ideas
• RI.2.9: Integration of Knowledge and Ideas
• RL.2.2: Key Idea and Details
• RL.2.3: Key Ideas and Details
• RL.2.5: Craft and Structure
• SL.2.1: Comprehension and Collaboration
• SL.2.2: Comprehension and Collaboration
• SL.2.3: Comprehension and Collaboration
• W.2.3: Text Type and Purposes
• W.2.5: Production and Distribution of Writing
• W.2.6: Production and Distribution of Writing
• W.2.7: Research to Build and Present Knowledge
• W.2.8: Research to Build and Present Knowledge

Mathematics

• 2.G.A.1: Reason with shapes and their attributes.
• 2.G.A.3: Reason with shapes and their attributes.
• 2.NBT.B.5: Use place value understanding and properties of operations to add and subtract.
• 2.OA.A.1: Represent and solve problems involving addition and subtraction.
• 2.OA.B.2: Add and subtract within 20.
• 2.OA.C.3: Work with equal groups of objects to gain foundations for multiplication.
• 2.MD.A.1: Measure and estimate lengths in standard units.
• 2.MD.A.3: Measure and estimate lengths in standard units.
• 2.MD.D.10: Represent and interpret data.

Lesson Summaries
Lesson 1
In this unit, students will explore the main natural materials—water, minerals and rocks, and soil—that compose Earth and help support life on this planet. Lesson 1 begins with a pre-unit assessment in which students share their ideas about the materials that make up Earth. Students begin to build an age-appropriate understanding that water is found in many forms and changes the shape of the land. Because water has a large influence on Earth, it is important to know where water can be found and how it cycles on Earth. Students use maps, models, and graphs to discover where and how water impacts Earth. In the next lesson, students will investigate rocks, and how they shape Earth's surface.
Lesson 2
In Lesson 1, students were introduced to the materials that make up Earth's surface. They focused on water, discussing and investigating its different states, different bodies of water, and the phases of the water cycle that move water around Earth. In this lesson, students focus on rocks. Students discuss how rocks change as a result of weathering and erosion, and they work in teams to sort a set of rocks and investigate the type of materials that make up rocks. In the next lesson, students will investigate sand and how its behavior shapes Earth's surface.
Lesson 3
In Lesson 2, students investigated and classified the properties of a variety of rocks. In this lesson, review what they have learned about the properties of rocks and use that knowledge to explore sand. Students work in small groups and then in larger teams to model how wind and water can change and shape sand, and they design solutions to slow the effects of wind erosion on sand dunes. In the next lesson, students will investigate soil and how its behavior shapes Earth's surface.
Lesson 4
In Lesson 3, students investigated sand and looked at how water and wind can affect sand and landforms composed primarily of sands. Students also designed barriers to reduce the impact of wind erosion on their model sand dunes. In this lesson, students will investigate the properties of soil including the soil at their school. As a class, students will discuss solutions to reduce the effects of soil erosion. In the next lesson, students will explore how large landforms can be changed by erosion over time.
Lesson 5
In the previous lesson, students investigated the properties of soil and discussed solutions to reduce the effects of soil erosion. In this lesson, students continue to explore how Earth's surface can change through weathering and erosion. Students build on the understanding that wind and water can change the shape of the land. Students investigate how glaciers shape and change land over time and how a river forms a canyon. In the next lesson, students will apply what they have learned throughout the unit to build a model landform.
Lesson 6
In the previous lessons, students have learned about the natural materials that make up Earth's surface. Students investigated how those natural materials are created, shaped, and changed over time by weathering and erosion. In this final lesson, students will use what they have learned throughout the unit to create a model of a landform, an island, and they will present their models to the class. In their presentations, students will need to discuss what impact erosion will have on at least one of the landforms in their model. As a post-unit assessment, students revisit their class chart from Lesson 1 to evaluate what they have learned throughout the unit. The summative assessment requires students to apply concepts from every lesson to answer a series of questions.

*Next Generation Science Standards® is a registered trademark of WestEd. Neither WestEd nor the lead states and partners that developed the Next Generation Science Standards were involved in the production of this product, and do not endorse it.