Geologic History Unit Relative Dating Fossils Geologic Time Scale Sedimentary

This 3-week unit on Geologic History is a series of lessons to help students to explore and make sense of relative and numeric time, rock strata and the basic principles of stratigraphy, how index fossils are used to determine geologic history, mass extinctions and how they delineate the geologic timescale, and how the age of the Earth has been theorized based on rock evidence.

What is a blended learning unit? Blended learning combines online educational materials and opportunities with physical place-based classroom methods.This resource is the digital 'backbone' component of the unit that is editable and flexible for incorporating hands-on activities and labs and for varying the delivery of lessons to accommodate whole-class discussion, or small group, partner, or individual work. The unit overview is chock-full of ideas for dynamic classroom learning!

But PLEASE NOTE! This is NOT a webquest! These lessons are written to be a sequential journey through the content and the teacher will still be facilitating the lessons. Students are not left to complete these lessons on their own. The teacher can use best practice pedagogy to have students interacting in whole-class discussions and small group work throughout the unit!

The variety of activities that make up this unit include:

• a pre-assessment
• organizing events from their own lives into relative and absolute timescales
• analyzing relationships of sedimentary rock strata at the Grand Canyon, Zion, and Bryce Canyon National Parks
• manipulating index fossils in rock layers
• learning and applying the stratigraphic principles to geologic cross-sections
• discussing the evidence for and consequences of Earth's 5 major mass extinction events
• researching the present 6th mass extinction
• observing the evidence that supports our estimate of Earth's age
• learning about how Earth's history is organized by the geologic time scale
• digital manipulatives
• online simulations
• interactive website activities
• a virtual fossil dating lab
• video clips
• close reading
• graphic organizers
• formative assessments
• a post-assessment
• ... and more!

This unit can be facilitated using Google Classroom. These lessons are organized into separate Google Docs that you can share each day on your Google Classroom.

My students have responded so well to this lesson format because they know what to expect. I love that I can schedule out all of the lessons in Google Classroom ahead of time! The prep is easy, it's easy to modify for differentiation, and it's easy to grade!

This download includes:

• Detailed Teacher Notes for facilitating this unit using Google Classroom
• A Unit Overview Google Doc that is for the Teacher -- this document has all of the lessons written out in sections (Lesson 1, Lesson 2, Lesson 3, etc.) so that you can see everything in one place. This document notes how many days (45-50 minute periods) each individual lesson will usually take to complete and it contains most of the answers for the activities. This will help you with planning
• "Make a Copy" links for all Student Lesson Docs -- these are the Docs you will share with your students on Google Classroom. Students will type directly on their copies of these Docs and these are what you will grade for each student
• "Make a Copy" links for all supporting Docs, Slides and Forms included in the unit

Please view the PREVIEW for more visuals of how this unit is organized.

This unit is editable so you can add, delete, and modify parts!

This unit was designed to meet NGSS MS-ESS4-1 (Construct a scientific explanation based on evidence from rock strata for how the geologic time scale is used to organize Earth’s 4.6-billion year old history).

These are the topics covered in each lesson:

Lesson 1: Relative, Sequential, and Numerical Time

Lesson 2: Sedimentary Rock Layers

Lesson 3: Correlation of Rock Layers

Lesson 4: Principles of Stratigraphy

Lesson 5: Index Fossils

Lesson 6: Mass Extinctions

Lesson 7: The Age of the Earth

This unit has been completed by my students and I'm confident that this unit will save you TONS of planning time!

You may also be interested in these resources!:

Relative Age Dating of Rocks Cornell Doodle Notes

Geologic History "Clue-Style" Review Board Game

Geologic Timescale Amazing Race Project

Geologic Time Abracadabra Pixel Art Digital Vocabulary Review

Rocks and Minerals Digital Unit

Types of Rocks and the Rock Cycle Abracadabra Pixel Art Digital Review

Weathering on Earth's Surface Cornell Doodle Notes

Erosion and Deposition Cornell Doodle Notes

Thanks for looking!

Sunrise Science