Use the science to investigate a real source, explain the evidence, and communicate a defensible conclusion. The guide supplies the actual reading, data, task, and chosen level before the unit begins.
| Strand | Required evidence |
|---|---|
| History, Reading, Writing | Use an approved source in context and a student-authored response. Separate the original evidence from later explanations; do not force a single-hero story. |
| Geography and ethics | Include location, social context, or ethical trade-offs where they genuinely support the scientific question. |
| Elective extensions | Choose additional depth in data, technology, economics, or art. Extensions do not replace the core work. |
| Quantitative science | Use the unit's mathematical lane at the agreed level. Supply units, denominators, and model conditions; required science is assessed as science. |
Integration is reported separately and cannot lower the science grade or block a science demonstration pass. Science and practical criteria determine that pass.
Use the same approved task in both formats. The web guide explains the source, data, assumptions, student work, and evidence checklist; this packet is its portable summary, not a different assignment.
Use the web guide's approved unit assignment.
| Unit | Geology big idea | Integration anchor |
|---|---|---|
| 01 Minerals | Use material properties and uncertainty to support identification. | Connect Agricola/Mohs with the assigned resource case; distinguish grade/recovery from a reserve or extraction decision. |
| 02 Igneous Rocks & Volcanism | Molten rock cools and crystallizes; cooling rate sets texture, and eruptions shape the land. | The Neptunist–Plutonist debate Hutton helped settle — that basalt froze from melt, not seawater. |
| 03 Sedimentary Rocks & Stratigraphy | Grains and dissolved minerals settle and cement into layered rock that records its environment. | Steno’s laws of superposition and original horizontality — the foundation of relative dating and the stratigraphic column. |
| 04 Metamorphic Rocks & the Rock Cycle | Heat and pressure recrystallize rock without melting it; the three families convert into one another. | Hutton’s rock cycle — the first truly cyclic model of the Earth, with no beginning and no end. |
| 05 Plate Tectonics & Mountain Building | Separate relative motion, opening, and vertical uplift. | Connect plate evidence to the supplied vectors and conditional timescales; a modern rate is not a measured age. |
| 06 Earthquakes & Earth’s Interior | Use seismic models and uncertainty to interpret hidden structure. | Distinguish location, magnitude, intensity, hazard probability, and a specific earthquake prediction. |
| 07 Weathering, Erosion & Landforms | Connect material changes, groundwater, and sediment flux. | Use assigned head/transport data and approved observations to test interpretations, not issue site-safety clearances. |
| 08 Geologic Time & Earth History | The rock and fossil record, read by relative and radiometric methods, orders Earth’s history. | Hutton at Siccar Point and Lyell’s Principles of Geology — the half-life math that put numbers on deep time. |
Use a sourced Siccar Point cross-section to order the events. Any numerical age needs a supplied sample, isotopic system, and dated event; crystallization does not automatically date sediment deposition. State the assumptions of any erosion-rate estimate. Connect the supported sequence to Hutton's interpretation and distinguish it from what the evidence cannot date.
Math never drives a unit, but geology uses it constantly — always anchored to the rock, map, or measurement in the field. Here is the quantitative skill each unit actually uses, done inside the lab context rather than as a parallel curriculum.
| Unit | Applied math at the agreed level |
|---|---|
| 01 Minerals | Density and bounds, ordinal hardness, contained/recovered metal, and grade fractions; resource arithmetic is not reserve certification. |
| 02 Igneous Rocks & Volcanism | Interval cooling rates, texture ratios, and composition percentages; no unique cooling history or eruption forecast from one property. |
| 03 Sedimentary Rocks & Stratigraphy | Scaled columns, bed proportions, relative order, and preserved accumulation rates with compaction and hiatus limits. |
| 04 Metamorphic Rocks & the Rock Cycle | Specified overburden and temperature-gradient models; distinguish total pressure, pore pressure, and mineral-history inference. |
| 05 Plate Tectonics & Mountain Building | Relative vectors, normal opening, conditional timescales, and separate uplift-minus-erosion calculations. |
| 06 Earthquakes & Earth’s Interior | Stated P/S travel model and uncertainty; amplitude/magnitude/energy comparisons and hypothetical independent-year probability. |
| 07 Weathering, Erosion & Landforms | Hydraulic head, Darcy discharge, effective porosity and pore speed; constant versus time-integrated sediment mass transport. |
| 08 Geologic Time & Earth History | Conditional parent/daughter clocks, dated-event context, deposition bounds, uncertainty, and a versioned geological time scale. |
Students do the half-life arithmetic inside the deep-time investigation, the epicenter math inside the seismogram exercise, the deposition-rate calculation inside the stratigraphy lab. The number always means something because it is attached to a result they produced — never a worksheet detached from the geology.
Integration is its own strand. Track each unit’s integration level across the year — Developing, Proficient, or Mastery — separate from the science-mastery rubric. Record the evidence reference and date in the final column.
| Unit | Developing | Proficient | Mastery | Evidence / date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 Minerals | ◯ | ◯ | ◯ | ______ |
| 02 Igneous Rocks & Volcanism | ◯ | ◯ | ◯ | ______ |
| 03 Sedimentary Rocks & Stratigraphy | ◯ | ◯ | ◯ | ______ |
| 04 Metamorphic & Rock Cycle | ◯ | ◯ | ◯ | ______ |
| 05 Plate Tectonics | ◯ | ◯ | ◯ | ______ |
| 06 Earthquakes & Interior | ◯ | ◯ | ◯ | ______ |
| 07 Weathering & Erosion | ◯ | ◯ | ◯ | ______ |
| 08 Geologic Time | ◯ | ◯ | ◯ | ______ |
A student who walks through all eight anchors finishes understanding that geology is how humans learned to read time in stone, and that every principle on the page was once a discovery someone fought for — the version of the subject a student keeps.