Fifth grade’s first unit of study this trimester, Earth Science, has begun with a few interesting and robust investigations. As an introduction to weathering, erosion and deposition, students worked in groups to construct a river, its banks and nearby land. Before building began we observed the Horse Tavern Brook which runs along our campus and discussed some of its features. The students then gathered pebbles, rocks, plant life and anything else they thought would add to the rivers. When completed, groups ran water down their rivers and made direct observations of how water can shape a landscape!

Students also made models of the Earth’s layers using Play-Doh. Each layer had to be carefully created and labeled to represent a model that was as close to scale as the student could achieve. This led to a better understanding of the spatial relationship from one layer to the next.

Finally students were given world maps, asked to cut the continents out and while paying close attention to the shapes of the coastlines of each continent, try to fit them together – the objective was to form one large landmass similar to Pangea. Students then were able to attach terms like plate tectonics and the theory of continental drift to this investigation.