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Grade 4. In this module students explain phenomena and solve problems related to patterns observed in natural Earth processes (such as rock formations, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and waves) that reveal information about the natural world. They also explore hazards caused by some of the processes and how to reduce their impacts. Module includes a teacher guide, 10 student activity guides, 16 Smithsonian Science Stories student readers, and enough materials for 32 students to use 1 time.

Grade 4. Module Highlights: During the module's 15 lessons, students explain phenomena and solve problems related to patterns observed in natural Earth processes (including rock formations, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and waves) that reveal information about the natural world. They also explore hazards caused by some of these processes and how the impacts of those hazards can be reduced. This module includes a teacher guide, 10 student activity guides, 16 Smithsonian Science Stories student readers, and enough materials for 32 students to use 1 time.

Student Readers Available HERE

Alignment to the Next Generation Science Standards*
Performance Expectations

• 4-ESS1-1: Identify evidence from patterns in rock formations and fossils in rock layers to support an explanation for changes in a landscape over time.
• 4-ESS2-1: Make observations and/or measurements to provide evidence of the effects of weathering or the rate of erosion by water, ice, wind, or vegetation.
• 4-ESS2-2: Analyze and interpret data from maps to describe patterns of Earth's features.
• 4-ESS3-2: Generate and compare multiple solutions to reduce the impacts of natural Earth processes on humans.
• 4-PS4-1: Develop a model of waves to describe patterns in terms of amplitude and wavelength and that waves can cause objects to move.
• 3-5-ETS1-1: Define a simple design problem reflecting a need or a want that includes specified criteria for success and constraints on materials, time, or cost.

Disciplinary Core Ideas
ESS1.C: The History of Planet Earth**

• Local, regional, and global patterns of rock formations reveal changes over time due to Earth forces, such as earthquakes. The presence and location of certain fossil types indicate the order in which rock layers were formed.

• Rainfall helps shape the land and affect the types of living things found in a region. Water, ice, wind, living organisms, and gravity break rocks, soils, and sediments into smaller particles and move them around.

• The locations of mountain ranges, deep ocean trenches, ocean floor structures, earthquakes, and volcanoes occur in patterns. Most earthquakes and volcanoes occur in bands that are often along the boundaries between continents and oceans. Major mountain chains form inside continents or near their edges. Maps can help locate the different land and water features areas of Earth.

• Living things affect the physical characteristics of their regions.

• A variety of hazards result from natural processes (e.g., earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions). Humans cannot eliminate the hazards but can take steps to reduce their impacts.

• Waves, which are regular patterns of motion, can be made in water by disturbing the surface. When waves move across the surface of deep water, the water goes up and down in place; there is no net motion in the direction of the wave except when the water meets a beach.
• Waves of the same type can differ in amplitude (height of the wave) and wavelength (spacing between wave peaks).

• Possible solutions to a problem are limited by available materials and resources (constraints). The success of a designed solution is determined by considering the desired features of a solution (criteria). Different proposals for solutions can be compared on the basis of how well each one meets the specified criteria for success or how well each takes the constraints into account.

Focal Science and Engineering Practices

• Developing and using models
• Engaging in argument from evidence

Focal Crosscutting Concepts

• Patterns
• Cause and effect

Phenomena and Problems Storyline
Lesson Summaries
Lesson 1: Sedimental Value
Students build a model of several layers of the Grand Canyon, embedding model fossils, to help explain how the patterns of rock can tell them which layer, and fossil, is older.
Lesson 2: Gorges Views
Students simulate various types of Earth forces on their canyon model and make observations about how these different sources of weathering and erosion affect the landscape.
Lesson 3: A Tale of Two Tsunamis
Students are introduced to the phenomenon through a video of a large wave and discuss their prior knowledge of waves. Students create waves by disturbing the surface of water to begin modeling the patterns of their movement.
Lesson 4: Emergent-Sea Preparations
Students explore a digital simulation of waves at the shore and compare patterns of regular waves to tsunamis. Students create a model of a tsunami wave at the shore.
Lesson 5: Making Waves
Students learn more about the causes of tsunamis through a text and use what they learn to support an explanation about what could have caused the tsunami.
Lesson 6: Patterns on the Surface
Students use maps to explore the patterns of where natural Earth processes that can cause tsunamis occur, including earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Students begin to narrow down what could have caused the tsunami waves in Hawaii and Japan.
Lesson 7: Around the Globe
Students explore specific Earth processes that occurred around the same time as the tsunami waves in the two locations and draw models on a globe to explain the phenomenon.
Lesson 8: A Ship on the Ocean
Students create a new model of a wave using a moving chain to see that a wave moves objects up and down but not forward to help explain what happened to the ship.
Lesson 9: Deep Ocean Tsunami
Students explore a tsunami digital simulation in the deep ocean to discover that the wavelength of tsunami waves is very large, but the amplitude at sea is not significantly bigger than a regular ocean wave.
Lesson 10: Fire and Mud
Students are introduced to the problem through a series of videos showing a hillside after a wildfire. Students ask questions to narrow the scope of the problem and begin by investigating patterns in types of Earth processes that can cause landslides.
Lesson 11: Plants—Friend or Foe?
Students model and test the soil-anchoring properties of plants in a hands-on investigation simulating mudslides.
Lesson 12: Hydroseeding Hills
Students learn through a text about techniques that engineers use to minimize hazards from landslides, including hydroseeding hillsides, and refine the criteria and constraints of the problem.
Lesson 13: Mudslide Solutions
Students design a solution to the mudslide problem using a combination of physical barriers and hydroseeding mixture solutions. They compare and evaluate each other's solutions based on how well each meets the class-defined criteria and constraints.
Science Challenge
Lesson 14: Slope and Slide, Part 1
Students develop a list of characteristics of a mountain site that might impact the landslide risk in the area. Groups develop this into a landslide-risk rubric. Students independently explain the evidence that supports five categories on their group's rubric: slope, plants, animals, earthquakes, and precipitation.
Lesson 15: Slope and Slide, Part 2
Student groups use their rubric to assess the landslide risk at two proposed park locations. They use their completed rubric to present an argument supporting their site selection. They receive peer feedback from another group and provide feedback on site selection to that group.

*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.