The Grand Staircase Phenomenon
A perfect phenomenon to kick off a unit on Geologic History is The Grand Staircase — the incredible stairstep of the Grand Canyon, Zion Canyon, and Bryce Canyon. At first my students seem a little confuzzled by this whole concept but after we discuss and model it, the Eurekas! start firing.
Here is a video that helps to explain this: The Grand Staircase Video
I use The Grand Staircase as the grounding phenomenon of my Geologic History Unit.
Speaking of The Grand Canyon… you MUST discuss it if you’re teaching about rock strata. Especially being from New Jersey, this is the perfect chance to get my students to visualize themselves amidst a massive, encompassing natural landform. My students really enjoy this video: Making North America: Uncovering Layers of the Grand Canyon.
Clay Cupcake Sedimentary Rock Strata Activity
This Clay Cupcake Activity is a perfect hands-on activity for early in your Geologic History unit. Students learn how geologists study sediment layers, rock strata, and stratigraphy beneath Earth’s surface by simulating core sampling of the rock record.
Students use clear plastic straws to model rock coring in a ‘tiny town’ playdough clay cupcake. The playdough is easy to make and when you layer it with a little bit of sand or dirt and rice grains to represent fossils, students will have beautiful rock strata to diagram! Students diagram the core samples and predict what they think the cross-section will look like. When their tiny town is sliced open to the full cross-section, they can see how close their prediction came to the clay cupcake’s actual rock layers.
After students draw what the actual cross-section looks like, I make up a Key for the colors and have them label their diagrams:
- Green = topsoil
- Orange = siltstone
- Yellow = limestone
- Blue = shale
- Pink = sandstone
- Red = conglomerate
- Brown (soil) = volcanic ash
- Tan (sand) = forest debris
Then, the lesson includes two great video clips that show this technique being used in the field and actual rock cores. The students really see how we model this pretty well! We refer back to this activity a lot during our geologic history unit.
Peanut Butter and Jelly Geology
I love using the analogy of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich to teach the Principles of Stratigraphy and the concept of relative age dating of rock strata. I designed these Relative Age Dating Doodle Notes to use that very analogy to help students examine cross sections of rock strata.
It’s so rewarding see how my students respond to this analogy because it resonates with most of them and they are able to apply the concepts to more and more challenging examples!
Check out my doodle notes here.
Layers of Time Fossil Game
This American Museum of Natural History Layers of Time Fossil Game provides a good challenge for students to organize index fossils from a sample rock record. It’s approachable and engaging and has three levels that change every time so that students have to sort it all out themselves each round!
Capitalize on the Intrigue of Mass Extinction
This topic keeps the momentum in my unit because I always find that my students are intrigued and terrified of the concept of mass extinction. I have some neat resources for teaching about the Permian Extinction and the other four major mass extinctions.
The hhmi Biointeractive The Making of Mass Extinctions Interactive is a good visual with clickable buttons for students to explore more about the causes of each of the major mass extinctions.
The three videos in the Pixel Dust Studios Ancient Earth Mini-Series are absolute gold for teaching this topic. I usually show episode 1 and episode 3. The animations of prehistoric dinosaurs and other life and the conditions that may have been during these mass extinction events are invaluable for helping students to wrap their heads around the scale of death and destruction.
We always discuss the ongoing 6th mass extinction that’s happening NOW. Students are usually very upset by this but once we dive into it, they are also not surprised. The hhmi Biointeractive The Anthropocene is a good visual for how humans are causing a mass extinction. And to capitalize on the emotional aspect, I have my students explore the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species and choose an endangered, critically endangered, or extinct in the wild species to research.
You can grab all of my mass extinction lessons as part of my Geologic History Blended Learning Unit.
Geologic Time Scale Amazing Race Project
Just as in the T.V. show “The Amazing Race” for which contestants travel around the world on a giant scavenger hunt, in this Geologic Time Scale Amazing Race Project, your students embark on a journey through time. Rather than having them construct a 2D timeline, they get to be in it! Students choose time periods to visit along Earth’s Geologic Time Scale and collect information and evidence from each that will be used in “modern times” to learn about the past!
They will follow a Travel Map and complete ‘Time Travel Tasks’ along the way that include Speed Bumps, Detours, and Fast Forwards! The required research includes climate, atmosphere, lifeforms, index fossils, continent locations and tectonic plate structure, major catastrophic and slow-moving events, and evidence that we use now to learn about the time period such as index fossils, radioactive elements, radiocarbon dating, impact craters, and geological formations.
Your students will be able to choose to travel alone, as a pair, or as a trio, but their challenge changes depending on their group size! Students will be keeping a ‘Travel Journal’ (research notes) during their trip. The culminating project is that the students must turn their research into a ‘Travel Journal’ presentation. This project will help the students to digest all of the information that they’ve discovered along their journey, and it will help them to understand the underlying principle of the Geologic Time Scale, which is that all of the recorded time is relative and these ‘periods’ were usually punctuated by major events.
Make a Fossil Lab
For years I tried to find a fossil-making activity with a specific and concise lab procedure for my students to follow. I never found one! That’s why I designed this (FREE!) Make a Fossil Lab. It is an engaging, hands-on activity for your Geologic History or Fossil Record unit. I like to do this lab towards the end of my unit. Students follow a procedure to measure the ingredients to make their plaster of Paris and they design their own cast fossil. They can take their fossil home as a souvenir!
