HS-ESS2-1

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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.

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 processes (such as volcanism, tectonic uplift, and deposition) and destructive processes (such as weathering, subduction, and coastal erosion).

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

Performance Level Descriptions

PLDs communicate the knowledge and skills expected of students to demonstrate proficiency in each Learning Standard. NYS assessments classify student performance into one of five levels.

Level 5Level 4Level 3Level 2Level 1

Develop a complex model which allows for manipulation and testing that demonstrates the relationships between Earth's internal and surface processes responsible for the formation of continental and ocean-floor features across varying spatial and temporal scales.

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.

Use a model to explain how Earth's internal and/or surface processes (constructive and/or destructive) operate at different spatial or temporal scales to form continental and/or ocean-floor features or to explain the distribution of rocks and/or minerals within Earth's crust.

Use a model to identify Earth's internal and/or surface process(es) (constructive and/or destructive) that operate at different spatial or temporal scales to form continental and/or ocean-floor features or to identify an Earth surface or internal process that forms continental or oceanic floor features or to explain the distribution of rocks and/or minerals within Earth's crust.

Use a model to determine whether a continental or ocean-floor feature results from Earth's internal and/or surface process(es) (constructive and/or destructive) or to identify the distribution of rocks and/or minerals within Earth's crust.

Resources

Examples and discussion of resources for the learning, teaching, and assessment of HS-ESS2-1.

This section could be expanded upon. You can help out by adding to this section.

Assessment

What assessment of HS-ESS2-1 might look like on a NY state exam.

This section could be expanded upon. You can help out by adding to this section.

NGSS Dimensions

Performance expectation HS-ESS2-1 was developed using the following elements from the NRC document A Framework for K-12 Science Education:

Science and Engineering Practices

• Developing and using models: Develop a model based on evidence to illustrate the relationships between systems or between components of a system.

Disciplinary Core Ideas

• Earth materials and systems: Earth’s systems, being dynamic and interacting, cause feedback effects that can increase or decrease the original changes.
• 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.
• Plate tectonics and large-scale system interactions: Plate movements are responsible for most continental and ocean-floor features and for the distribution of most rocks and minerals within Earth’s crust.

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.

Page contributors: Caroline Leonard, Conrad Richman

Earth and Space Science | HS. History of the Earth