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7th grade · Science · Unit 10 of 14

Earth's Changing Surface

The rock cycle, slow and fast changes, and moving plates.

What your child practices

Practices the rock cycle, how surface processes change land at different speeds and scales, and evidence that plates move, with examples from the glaciers that shaped the Finger Lakes and Long Island and the old rock of the Adirondacks.

New York State Learning Standards learning standard: MS-ESS2-1; MS-ESS2-2; MS-ESS2-3 · the rock cycle, surface processes at different scales, and evidence for plate motion

How we explain it

Children can open this short lesson before they practice.

  1. Rock cycle: igneous from melted rock, sedimentary from layers, metamorphic from heat and pressure.
  2. Glaciers, rivers and wind reshape land, some fast and some over thousands of years.
  3. Matching fossils on far-apart continents show they were once joined.

Example: Rock is changed by heat and pressure deep underground. What kind is it now? Changed rock is metamorphic. Answer: metamorphic

Earth's Changing Surface in New York

In the New York State Learning Standards, this is unit 10 of 14 in 7th grade Science, after Chemical Reactions and before Resources & Hazards.

Gradelings describes a child's practice on this unit as Beginning, Approaching, Meeting or Exceeding (Four practice steps). That reflects practice, not a report-card mark: the teacher decides the mark.

Source: New York State Education Department (NYSED)

Sample questions

A taste of this unit. In the app, questions change every time and get easier or harder to match your child.

  1. Question 1

    The Finger Lakes valleys were deepened slowly by…

    • glaciers over thousands of years
    • one earthquake in a day
    • volcanoes
    • people with shovels

  2. Question 2

    Rock formed from layers of pressed sediment is…

    • igneous
    • sedimentary
    • metamorphic
    • volcanic

  3. Question 3

    Which process is very slow?

    • Mountains rising from plate collisions
    • A landslide
    • A volcanic eruption
    • A flash flood

  4. Question 4

    When one plate slides under another, it is called…

    • deposition
    • erosion
    • convection
    • subduction

  5. Question 5

    Matching fossils on continents now far apart are evidence that…

    • fossils swim
    • birds carried them
    • they formed recently
    • the continents were once joined

  6. Question 6

    The Adirondacks are made of very old rock that formed deep underground. It is at the surface now because…

    • it fell from space
    • the land rose and erosion removed the rock above
    • it formed last year
    • lava poured out yesterday

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