LS.4.2.2: Analyze and interpret data to explain how fossils suggest ideas about…

Restless Earth: Fossils, Soils, Volcanoes and Plates Grades 4–7

Press model fossils and read a cliff of layers, shake a jar of soil and watch it sort itself by grain size, plot real volcanoes and earthquakes on a world map to find the edges of Earth's plates, then move model plates and test a building on a shake table. Four hands-on lessons that build on Rocks and Erosion.

• How do fossils form, and what can they tell us? 55–70 min

  Teams press shells and leaves into clay to make a mould and a salt-dough cast, build a cliff of coloured layers with a different model fossil in each, and swap cliffs to work out which layer is oldest. They then read a cliff of real fossils and explain that a place once under the sea is now dry land.

Printable practice for LS.4.2.2

These pages practise a closely related idea; the match to LS.4.2.2 is partial.

• Restless Earth: Fossils, Soils, Volcanoes and Plates workbook included with the unit

  2 readings, 1 word wall, 1 English-support page, 1 practice page, 1 unit review, 1 unit test, with answer keys.

Need just this outcome? Build a custom pack from these pages, with its answer key, in about a minute. Custom packs come with All-access and school licences.