Mission Library

Landslide
Weathering and Erosion
Grades 4-5

The Mission
38 min

Storyline

Using their knowledge of weathering and erosion, the crew will try to save a colony from landslides.

A colony on Vespus is in a state of emergency. Many of their buildings have been swept away by landslides, and it’s continuing to happen! The city had an emergency meeting to talk about what might be causing the landslides. In that meeting, they came up with a list of possible reasons this is happening. We need to investigate those allocations and provide a solution before the whole city is destroyed!

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3-Dimensional Science

Phenomenon

Weathering, erosion, and deposition cause changes to Earth's surface.

Science and Engineering Practices

Asking Questions and Defining Problems

  • Ask questions that can be investigated and predict reasonable outcomes based on patterns such as cause and effect relationships.

  • Define a simple design problem that can be solved through the development of an object, tool, process, or system and includes several criteria for success and constraints on materials, time, or cost.

Analyzing and Interpreting Data

  • Analyze and interpret data to make sense of phenomena, using logical reasoning, mathematics, and/or computation.

Constructing Explanations and Designing Solutions

  • Use evidence (e.g., measurements, observations, patterns) to construct or support an explanation or design a solution to a problem.

  • Identify the evidence that supports particular points in an explanation.

  • Generate and compare multiple solutions to a problem based on how well they meet the criteria and constraints of the design solution.

Engaging in Argument from Evidence

  • Respectfully provide and receive critiques from peers about a proposed procedure, explanation, or model by citing relevant evidence and posing specific questions.

  • Construct and/or support an argument with evidence, data, and/or a model.

Obtaining, Evaluating, and Communicating Information

  • Read and comprehend grade appropriate complex texts and/or other reliable media to summarize and obtain scientific and technical ideas and describe how they are supported by evidence.

Planning and Carrying Out Investigations

  • Make predictions about what would happen if a variable changes.

Crosscutting Concepts

Cause and Effect

  • Students routinely identify and test casual relationships and use these relationships to explain change. They understand events that occur together with regularity might or might not signify a cause-and-effect relationship.

Disciplinary Core Ideas

ESS2.A: Earth Materials and Systems

  • Four major Earth systems interact. Rainfall helps to shape the land and affects the types of living things found in a region. Water, ice, wind, organisms, and gravity break rocks, soils, and sediments into smaller pieces and move them around.

Resources
Targeted Standards
Timeline
Skills in Action