Fossils

Help students make a rubbing of a fossil. Then have them write about their fossil or fossils in general, telling what they understand about what fossils are, how they are formed, and what animal their fossil came from.

After having discussed how a fossil is formed, have students get into groups where they as a group must retell the steps of fossil formation. Have them create a chart or poster of the process.

Provide students with fossils from the “Magic Bag” activity. When they have completed the identification of their fossil, have them research the animal that formed their fossil and do a museum-style write-up to put next to their fossil to put on display.

Sort images of dinosaur fossils into two legged or four legged groups.

Create a numeric code for the letters of the alphabet: 1-a, 2-b, 3-c, etc. Have students spell fossil terms or names and add the letters together to get a total.

Provide each student with a chocolate chip cookie, a napkin and some toothpicks. Have students excavate their chocolate chips while trying to keep the chips whole and undamaged. When they have finished their “dig”, graph how many chips were whole or nearly whole and the damaged chips.

All animals need food in order to live and grow. They obtain their food from plants or from other animals. Plants need water and light to live and grow. 

Living things need water, air, and resources from the land, and they live in places that have the things they need. 

Some events happen very quickly; others occur very slowly, over a time period much longer than one can observe.

Being part of a group helps animals obtain food, defend themselves, and cope with changes. Groups may serve different functions and vary dramatically in size.

Climate describes a range of an area's typical weather conditions and the extent to which those conditions vary over years.

Local, regional, and global patterns of rock formations reveal changes over time due to earth or other forces. The presence and location of certain fossil types indicate the order in which rock layers were formed. Examples of evidence from patterns could include rock layers with marine shell fossils above rock layers with plant fossils and no shells, indicating a change from land to water over time.

Energy and fuels that humans use are derived from natural Earth sources, and their use affects the environment in multiple ways. Non-renewable energy resources include fossil fuels. Examples of environmental effects include air pollution from burning fossil fuels.

Organisms are related in food webs in which some animals eat plants for food and other animals eat the animals that eat plants. Matter cycles between the air and soil and among plants, animals, and microbes as these organisms live and die. Decomposition eventually restores (recycles) some materials back to the soil. Organisms can survive only in environments in which their particular needs are met.

Some kinds of plants and animals that once lived on Earth are no longer found anywhere. Fossils provide evidence about the types of organisms that lived long ago and also about the nature of their environments. Examples of data could include type, size, and distributions of fossil organisms. Examples of fossils and environments could include marine fossils found on dry land, tropical plant fossils found in Arctic areas, and fossils of extinct organisms. Assessment is limited to major fossil types and relative ages.

Examples of evidence could include needs and characteristics of the organisms and habitats involved.

Populations live in a variety of habitats, and change in those habitats affects the organisms living there. When the environment changes in ways that affect a place's physical characteristics, temperature, or availability of resources, some organisms survive and reproduce, others move to new locations, yet others move into the transformed environment, and some die.

Organisms, and populations of organisms, are dependent on their environmental interactions both with other living things and with nonliving factors. In any ecosystem, organisms and populations with similar requirements for food, water, oxygen, or other resources may compete with each other for limited resources, access to which consequently constrains their growth and reproduction. Growth of organisms and population increases are limited by access to resources.

Ecosystems are dynamic in nature; their characteristics can vary over time. Disruptions to any physical or biological component of an ecosystem can lead to shifts in all its populations.

The collection of fossils and their placement in chronological order is known as the fossil record and documents the change of many life forms throughout the history of the Earth. Emphasis is on finding patterns of changes in the level of complexity and the chronological order of fossil appearance in the rock layers.

Anatomical similarities and differences between various organisms living today and between them and organisms in the fossil record enable the classification of living things.

The geologic time scale interpreted from rock strata provides a way to organize Earth's history. Analyses of rock strata and the fossil record provide relative dates, not an absolute scale. Emphasis is on how analyses of rock formations and the fossils they contain are used to establish relative ages of major events in Earth's history. Examples of Earth's major events could range from being very recent (such as the last Ice Age or the earliest fossils of homo sapiens) to very old (such as the formation of Earth or the earliest evidence of life). Examples can include the formation, evolution or extinction of particular living organisms.

Maps of ancient land and water patterns, based on investigations of rocks and fossils, make clear how Earth's plates have moved great distances, collided, and spread apart. Examples of data include similarities of rock and fossil types on different continents.

Humans depend on Earth's land, ocean, atmosphere, and biosphere for many different resources. Examples of uneven distributions of resources as a result of past processes include petroleum (locations of the burial of organic sediments and subsequent geologic traps).