4-ESS1-1 lessons
Identify evidence from patterns in rock formations and fossils in rock layers to support an explanation for changes in a landscape over time.
The Next Generation Science Standards code 4-ESS1-1 asks students to: “Identify evidence from patterns in rock formations and fossils in rock layers to support an explanation for changes in a landscape over time.” These Fieldbook lesson teaches it hands-on, with everyday materials, a printable teacher guide and a student sheet.
Restless Earth: Fossils, Soils, Volcanoes and Plates Grades 4–7 · partly supports this standard
- 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.
NGSS is used as written in Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, so the code 4-ESS1-1 matches there. Other states word and number their own versions: see curriculum alignment for your state's codes.
More NGSS standards for Grade 4
All standards we teach · Curriculum alignment by state and province
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