Glaciers


Standards

Idaho State Standards

Here are correlations to the Idaho State Language and Math standards and to the Idaho State Science Standards. For more information about the overall standards, see the complete Idaho Content Standards for Science, the Next Generation Science Standards, and the alignment between Idaho and NGSS Science Standards. You may also access the Idaho English Language Arts/Literacy Standards and Mathematics Standards.

Language

Fourth Grade

ELA-4.RW.3

Write informational texts that introduce the topic; develop the focus with facts, details or other information; and provide a concluding statement or section.

Suggested Lesson

After doing the experiment Glacial Pressure, write a paragraph explaining how this activity illustrates the process by which glaciers are formed.

Fifth Grade

ELA-5.NF.6d

Explain how authors use evidence and reasons to support specific claims in texts, identifying which reasons and evidence support which claims.

Suggested Lesson

After reading the literary selection Ice Sculptures, identify how the author used evidence to support the idea that glaciers leave behind clues telling us they were once there.

Sixth Grade

ELA-6.RW.3

Write informational texts that introduce the topic, develop the focus with relevant facts, definitions, concrete details, quotations, and examples from multiple sources using appropriate strategies, such as description, comparison, and/or cause-effect; and provide a concluding section that follows from the information presented.

Suggested Lesson

Students research at least three sources and write a report to answer one of these five questions: How do glaciers form? How do glaciers move? How do glaciers affect the landscape? Why are glaciers important to our planet? Why are glaciers shrinking, and what could be the possible effects?

Math

Second Grade

Math-2.NBT.B.5

Fluently add and subtract within 100 using understanding of place value and properties of operations.

Suggested Lesson

Use addition and subtraction to solve glacier word problems, such as those from this worksheet. Example: If a glacier moves 17 miles in 10 years, and then 14 miles in the next 10 years, how many miles has the glacier moved in 20 years?

Fourth Grade

Math-4.OA.3

Solve multi-step whole-number word problems using the four operations, including problems in which remainders must be interpreted.

Suggested Lesson

Solve real-life problems involving glaciers, as in: One side of a mountain is 5,280 feet long. If a glacier were to start at the very top of the mountain and travel 3 feet per year, how long would it take the glacier to reach the bottom of the mountain?

Sixth Grade

Math-6.SP.B.5a-b

Summarize numerical data sets in relation to their context, such as by:

a. Reporting the number of observations. 

b. Describing the attribute under investigation, including how it was measured and its units of measurement.

Suggested Lesson

Based on this Glacier Retreat lesson, use NASA data from 1973, 1991, and 2000 to calculate the average rate of glacial retreat per year.

Science

Kindergarten

Earth and Space Sciences: K-ESS-2.3

Communicate ideas that would enable humans to interact in a beneficial way with the land, water, or air, and/or other living things in the local government.

Supporting Content

Things that people do can affect the world around them. People can reduce their effects on the land, water, air, and other living things.

Designs can be conveyed through sketches, drawings, or physical models. These representations are useful in communicating ideas for a problem's solutions to other people.

Physical Sciences: K-PS-2.1

Make observations to determine the effect of the Sun’s energy on the Earth's surface.

Supporting Content

Sunlight warms Earth's surface.

Examples of Earth's surface could include sand, soil, rocks, water, etc.

Assessment of temperature is limited to relative measures such as warmer/cooler.

Second Grade

Physical Sciences: 2-PS-1.4

Construct an argument with evidence that some changes caused by heating or cooling can be reversed and some cannot.

Supporting Content

Heating or cooling a substance may cause changes that can be observed. Sometimes these changes are reversible, and sometimes they are not.

Physical Sciences: 2-PS-1.1

Plan and conduct an investigation to describe and classify different kinds of materials by their observable properties.

Supporting Content

Different kinds of matter exist and many of them can be solid, liquid, or gas depending on temperature. Matter can be described and classified by its observable properties. Observations could include color, texture, hardness, and flexibility. Different properties are suited to different purposes.

Earth and Space Sciences: 2-ESS-2.3

Obtain information to identify where water is found on Earth and that it can be solid, liquid.

Supporting Content

Water is found in the ocean, rivers, lakes, and ponds. Water exists as solid ice and in liquid form.

Earth and Space Sciences: 2-ESS-1.1

Use information from several sources to provide evidence that Earth events can occur quickly or slowly.

Supporting Content

Some events happen very quickly; others occur very slowly, over a time period much longer than one can observe. An example is the erosion of rocks, which occurs slowly.

Third Grade

Physical Sciences: 3-PS-1.1

Plan and conduct an investigation to provide evidence of the effects of balanced and unbalanced forces on the motion of an object.

Supporting Content

Each force acts on one particular object and has both strength and a direction. An object at rest typically has multiple forces acting on it, but they add to give zero net force on the object. Forces that do not sum to zero can cause changes in the object's speed or direction of motion. Gravity is addressed as a force that pulls objects down.

Earth and Space Sciences: 3-ESS-1.2

Obtain and combine information to describe climates in different regions of the world.

Supporting Content

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

Earth and Space Sciences: 3-ESS-1.1

Represent data in tables and graphical displays to describe typical weather conditions expected during a particular season.

Supporting Content

Scientists record patterns of the weather across different times and areas so that they can make predictions about what kind of weather might happen next.

Examples of data could include average temperature and precipitation, and wind direction.

Fourth Grade

Earth and Space Sciences 4-ESS-2.2

Analyze and interpret data from maps to describe patterns of Earth's features.

Supporting Content

The locations of mountain ranges, deep ocean trenches, ocean floor structures, earthquakes, and volcanoes occur in patterns.

Maps can include topographic maps of Earth's land and ocean floor, as well as maps of the locations of mountains and continental boundaries. Maps can help locate the different land and water features areas of Earth.

Earth and Space Sciences 4-ESS-2.1

Make observations and/or measurements to provide evidence of the effects of weathering or the rate of erosion by water, ice, wind, or vegetation.

Supporting Content

Water, ice, wind, living organisms, and gravity help to shape the land, and break rocks, soils, and sediments into smaller particles and move them around.

Examples of variables to test could include angle of slope in the downhill movement of water, speed of wind, relative rate of deposition, cycles of freezing and thawing of water, cycles of heating and cooling, and volume of water flow.

Earth and Space Sciences 4-ESS-1.1

Identify evidence from patterns in rock formations and fossils in rock layers for changes in a landscape over time to support an explanation for changes in a landscape over time.

Supporting Content

Local, regional, and global patterns of rock formations reveal changes over time due to earth forces, such as earthquakes.

Fifth Grade

Physical Sciences 5-PS-2.1

Support an argument that the gravitational force exerted by Earth on objects is directed downward.

Supporting Content

“Downward” is a local description of the direction that points toward the center of the spherical Earth.

Earth and Space Sciences 5-ESS-3.1

Obtain and combine information about ways communities protect Earth's resources and environment using scientific ideas

Supporting Content

Human activities in agriculture, industry, and everyday life have effects on the land, vegetation, streams, ocean, and air. Individuals and communities can often mitigate these effects through innovation and technology.

Earth and Space Sciences 5-ESS-2.2

Describe and graph the amounts and percentages of water and fresh water in various reservoirs to interpret and analyze the distribution of water on Earth.

Supporting Content

Nearly all of Earth’s available water is in the ocean. Most fresh water is in glaciers or underground; only a tiny fraction is in streams, lakes, wetlands, and the atmosphere.

Earth and Space Sciences 5-ESS-2.1

Develop a model using an example to describe ways the geosphere, biosphere, hydrosphere, and/or atmosphere interact.

Supporting Content

Earth's major systems are the geosphere (solid and molten rock, soil, and sediments), the hydrosphere (water and ice), the atmosphere (air), and the biosphere (living things, including humans). These systems interact in multiple ways to affect Earth's surface materials and processes.

Sixth Grade

Earth and Space Sciences MS-ESS-3.5

Ask questions to interpret evidence of the factors that cause climate variability throughout Earth’s history.

Supporting Content

Examples of factors include human activities (such as fossil fuel combustion and changes in land use) and natural processes (such as changes in incoming solar radiation and volcanic activity). Examples of evidence can include tables, graphs, and maps of global and regional temperatures; atmospheric levels of gases such as carbon dioxide and methane; and natural resource use.

Earth and Space Sciences MS-ESS-3.3

Apply scientific practices to design a method for monitoring human activity and increasing beneficial human influences on the environment.

Supporting Content

Technology and engineering can potentially help us best manage natural resources as populations increase.

Examples of the design process include examining human interactions and designing feasible solutions that promote stewardship.

Earth and Space Sciences MS-ESS-2.6

Develop and use a model to describe how unequal heating and rotation of the Earth cause patterns of atmospheric and oceanic circulation that determine regional climates.

Supporting Content

Weather and climate are influenced by interactions involving sunlight, the ocean, the atmosphere, ice, landforms, and living things. These interactions vary with latitude, altitude, and local and regional geography, all of which can affect oceanic and atmospheric flow patterns.

Earth and Space Sciences MS-ESS-2.4

Develop a model to describe the cycling of water through Earth's systems driven by energy from the sun and the force of gravity.

Supporting Content

Water continually cycles among land, ocean, and atmosphere via transpiration, evaporation, condensation and crystallization, and precipitation, as well as downhill flows on land.

Global movements of water and its changes in form are propelled by sunlight, temperature and gravity.

Emphasis is on the ways water changes its state as it moves through the multiple pathways of the hydrologic cycle.

Earth and Space Sciences MS-ESS-2.2

Construct an explanation based on evidence for how geoscience processes have changed Earth's surface at varying time and spatial scales.

Supporting Content

The planet's systems interact over scales that range from microscopic to global in size, and they operate over fractions of a second to billions of years. These interactions have shaped Earth's history and will determine its future.

Water's movements- both on land and underground- cause weathering and erosion, which change the land's surface features and create underground formations.

Examples of geoscience processes include surface weathering and deposition by the movements of water, ice, and wind.

Earth and Space Sciences MS-ESS-2.1

Develop a model to describe the cycling of Earth's materials and the internal and external flows of energy that drive the rock cycle processes.

Supporting Content

Emphasis is on the processes of melting, crystallization, weathering, deformation, and sedimentation, which act together to form minerals and rocks through the cycling of Earth’s materials.

Earth and Space Sciences MS-ESS-1.4

Construct a scientific explanation based on evidence from rock strata for how the geologic time scale is used to analyze Earth's history.

Supporting Content

The geologic time scale interpreted from rock strata provides a way to organize Earth's history.

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, to the very old, such as the formation of Earth.

Life Sciences MS-LS-2.5

Construct an argument supported by evidence that changes to physical or biological components of an ecosystem affect populations.

Supporting Content

Ecosystems are dynamic and vary over time. Disruptions to any component of an ecosystem can lead to shifts in all its populations.

Emphasis is on recognizing patterns in data and making warranted inferences about changes in populations, and on evaluating empirical evidence supporting arguments about changes to ecosystems.