Earth and Space Science · California Grade 7

MS-ESS2-2

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

Clarification statement: Emphasis is on how processes change Earth’s surface at time and spatial scales that can be large (such as slow plate motions or the uplift of large mountain ranges) or small (such as rapid landslides or microscopic geochemical reactions), and how many geoscience processes (such as earthquakes, volcanoes, and meteor impacts) usually behave gradually but are punctuated by catastrophic events. Examples of geoscience processes include surface weathering and deposition by the movements of water, ice, and wind. Emphasis is on geoscience processes that shape local geographic features, where appropriate.

Source: California Department of Education, NGSS Preferred Integrated Course Model, Grade 7 (accessed 2026-10-18)

Chapters

Chapter 8: Investigating Rock Stratapractice

Every rule in this lesson is a cause-and-effect statement about a geoscience process: sediment settling, rivers cutting canyons, plates folding and faulting rock, magma intruding. Lab 3 has students produce and explain deposition and erosion in a tray at a small scale and connect it to the Grand Canyon scale, and the slides compare a fault you can step across with the San Andreas, which builds toward explanations at varying time and spatial scales.

Chapter 9: Reconstructing Earth's Historypractice

The lesson's events run from an asteroid impact that reshaped the surface in a day to the 50-million-year collision that is still raising the Himalayas and the ice sheets that carved the Great Lakes basins over thousands of years. Slides 23-24 and W9 have students explain these changes at their proper time scales, which builds this Grade 7 PE without yet assessing it.

Chapter 10: Energy in Earth's Systemssupports

Volcanic eruptions and geysers appear here as surface evidence that energy and matter move outward from Earth's interior. Students do not yet construct explanations of surface change at different scales; that work belongs to Lesson 11.

Chapter 11: Scales of Change on Earth's Surfaceassesses

This is the lesson's own performance expectation. Lab 2 (the valley evidence mystery), Lab 3 (campus rates), W6 and W9 all require students to explain, with measurements or observations as evidence, how specific geoscience processes changed a surface and at what time and spatial scale, including gradual change punctuated by sudden events, which is the clarification statement in full.

Chapter 16: Earth's Tectonic Platessupports

Plate motion of a few centimeters a year is the slowest, largest process on the time-and-space scale this PE describes. The rate-times-time calculations in the deck and W9 build the idea that small yearly motions open oceans over millions of years, but the full explanation of surface change at many scales belongs to Lesson 11 and Lesson 17.

Chapter 17: The Rock Cyclepractice

The phenomenon (an intrusive dome now exposed and weathering) and the rock-detective slides ask students to explain from texture and setting how a formation reached the surface and is changing. This builds the explanation practice; the time-and-space-scale comparison the PE requires is developed in Lessons 11 and 26.

Chapter 25: Volcanic Eruptions and Earthquakessupports

Stress accumulates on a locked fault over decades or centuries and is released in seconds, and magma can collect for years before an eruption. This illustrates the clarification statement's point that earthquakes and volcanoes usually behave gradually but are punctuated by catastrophic events, without asking students to construct the full explanation the PE requires.

Chapter 26: Mass Wasting, Tsunamis, and Floodssupports

Creep moves a slope millimeters a year, while a debris flow or slide reshapes a hillside in minutes, and floods move sediment and cut channels. This illustrates the clarification statement's point that gradual processes are punctuated by catastrophic events and that rapid landslides are small-scale surface change; the full explanation that PE asks for is built in Lesson 11, not assessed here.

Worksheets (23)

Chapter	Worksheet	Role	How it connects
Ch. 8	W1 · The Sea Cliff That Keeps a Diary Phenomenon exploration	supports	The cliff shows deposition, tilting, faulting and erosion acting at different time scales. Noticing those processes in one place is background for explaining how geoscience processes change Earth's surface.
Ch. 8	W4 · Reading the Pine Hollow Road Cut: Eight Events in Stone Diagrams and models	practice	Tilting, faulting, erosion and deposition each appear as a separate event in the road cut. Naming them in order builds toward explaining how geoscience processes change Earth's surface at different time scales.
Ch. 8	W8 · Tinker Creek Canyon Jigsaw: Twelve Clues, One Timeline Collaborative investigation	practice	The timeline includes slow processes (deposition, tilting) and sudden ones (an ash fall, fault movement) at different scales, which is the varying-time-scales idea of this Grade 7 PE.
Ch. 8	W9 · Where Can the Gym Go? Reading a Fault Trench Before Building Transfer and design	practice	A fault that moves in sudden jumps separated by thousands of years is the Grade 7 PE's idea of processes that usually act gradually but are punctuated by catastrophic events; the trench shows the record of those jumps in a local feature.
Ch. 8	W10 · Rock Strata Check-Up: Twelve Items and a Synthesis Retrieval and mastery check	supports	Several items name deposition, tilting, erosion and faulting as separate events acting over different time spans, which is background for this Grade 7 PE on surface-changing processes.
Ch. 9	W1 · The Oldest Rocks on Earth Did Not Form on Earth Phenomenon exploration	supports	The initial explanations students write usually invoke weathering, erosion and plate motion recycling the surface over very long time scales, which is the Grade 7 idea that surface processes act across huge spans of time.
Ch. 9	W3 · Three Cliffs, One Story: How Short Rock Records Become Deep Time Reading with evidence	supports	The passage's 'missing pages' paragraph shows erosion and non-deposition acting over long time scales, which is background for the Grade 7 idea that surface processes operate at many time scales.
Ch. 9	W10 · Deep Time Check: Retrieval Practice and Synthesis Retrieval and mastery check	supports	Two items (q9 and q10) use surface processes acting over long time scales (recycling of old crust, ice sheets shaping land), the Grade 7 idea this chapter leans on.
Ch. 11	W1 · Six Seconds and Sixty Years: A Glacier's Two Clocks Phenomenon exploration	supports	This sheet surfaces the chapter's puzzle: the same geoscience process (moving ice) produces a change that takes seconds and a change that takes centuries. Students only observe, question and offer a first explanation; the evidence-based explanation the PE asks for is built in later worksheets.
Ch. 11	W2 · Break, Carry, Drop, Lift: Putting the Scale Words to Work Vocabulary in action	supports	Every explanation of surface change at varying scales uses these process words and the two scale words. This sheet makes sure students can apply them to new situations before they are asked to explain evidence with them.
Ch. 11	W3 · Two Geologists, Two Clocks: Hutton's Slow Time and Bretz's Fast Flood Reading with evidence	practice	The passage shows two scientists constructing explanations from landscape evidence at very different time scales. Students practice citing evidence for how processes changed Earth's surface, which is the reasoning the PE asks them to do themselves.
Ch. 11	W4 · Two Rulers, One Chart, One Hoodoo: Reading Time and Space Diagrams and models	practice	The PE asks for explanations of surface change 'at varying time and spatial scales.' Reading and then constructing the two-ruler chart gives students the scale reasoning those explanations depend on, without yet asking for a full evidence-based explanation.
Ch. 11	W5 · Cliff, Continent and Cave: Measuring Rates of Change Data and graphing	practice	Rates measured today are the quantitative bridge between present processes and past changes. Computing and comparing them across scales is the data practice behind explanations of how long a canyon, a cliff retreat or a continent's journey took.
Ch. 11	W6 · The Boulder Field at Kestrel Creek: Sudden, Gradual, or Both? Claim, evidence, reasoning	assesses	Students construct an explanation from evidence (deposit shape, a cliff scar, tree rings, a written record and a measured stream rate) for how geoscience processes changed a valley at two time scales: a landslide in minutes and stream erosion over centuries. This is the PE as written.
Ch. 11	W7 · Fixing Mateo's Field Trip Poster: Six Mistakes About Changing Landscapes Error analysis	practice	Students who believe that unchanging-looking landforms are not changing, that big landforms need big causes, or that uniformitarianism means constant speed will build faulty explanations of surface change. Diagnosing and rewriting these statements practices the accurate reasoning the PE requires.
Ch. 11	W8 · Scale Sorters: Twelve Earth Events on Two Rulers Collaborative investigation	practice	Sorting twelve events by spatial and time scale, then identifying that size and speed are independent and that sudden events have slow set-ups, builds the scale reasoning students need to explain surface change at varying scales. The group poster is a model, not yet a written explanation from evidence.
Ch. 11	W9 · Where Should the Overlook Go? Siting a Deck on a Changing Coast Transfer and design	practice	The decision depends on explaining how the coast changes at two time scales: gradual retreat measured in meters per year and a sudden landslide that removed 25 m in one night. Students apply that explanation to a design problem rather than constructing it from scratch.
Ch. 11	W10 · Scales of Change: Mastery Check Retrieval and mastery check	assesses	The synthesis paragraph asks for an explanation of how processes at different time and spatial scales change Earth's surface, using evidence from the chapter. The retrieval items check the vocabulary, scale reasoning and rate calculations that explanation depends on.
Ch. 16	W5 · Drill Cores Across Ridge R: Age, Distance and a Spreading Rate Data and graphing	supports	Converting centimeters per year into kilometers per million years gives students the time-and-space scale of the slowest, largest geoscience process; the full explanation of surface change at many scales belongs to other lessons.
Ch. 16	W10 · Mastery Check: Evidence, Plates and Rates Retrieval and mastery check	supports	Two items convert plate rates into distances over millions of years, the slow, large-scale end of the time-and-space scale this PE describes.
Ch. 17	W8 · Rock Detectives at Red Mesa: An Evidence Jigsaw Collaborative investigation	supports	The timeline mixes very slow events (intrusion, uplift, tilting) with fast ones (a lava flow, a rockfall), which previews the varying time scales of surface change that MS-ESS2-2 addresses in Lessons 11 and 26.
Ch. 25	W8 · California Hazard Briefing: A Twelve-Card Jigsaw Collaborative investigation	supports	The stick-slip and creep card and the Long Valley card show processes that build slowly for decades and are released suddenly, the gradual-then-catastrophic pattern in this PE's clarification statement. Students use it as background and do not construct the full explanation.
Ch. 26	W3 · What Holds a Hillside Up? Slope, Water and Earth Material Reading with evidence	supports	The PE's clarification names rapid landslides as a small-scale, sudden process that changes Earth's surface. The California cases show slopes that held for years and then failed in minutes, but students do not construct the full explanation this PE asks for.

Labs (10)

Chapter	Lab	Role	How it connects
Ch. 8	Lab 1 · Core the Hidden Layers: Reconstruct Strata You Cannot See Physical model	supports	Each recipe event models a geoscience process changing a stack of layers, which supports later explanations of how processes change Earth's surface at different scales.
Ch. 8	Lab 2 · The Quarry Case File: Order the Events and Bracket the Ages Evidence-based mystery	supports	The sequence students build is a history of geoscience processes acting on one spot at very different rates, from an ash fall in hours to deposition over millions of years, which supports explanations of surface change at varying time scales.
Ch. 8	Lab 3 · Where the Sediment Goes: Make a Layer, Then Cut a Canyon Classroom field investigation	practice	Students produce deposition and erosion themselves, compare slow and fast flow quantitatively, and then connect a 30-second channel in a tray and a downspout fan in the schoolyard to the Grand Canyon, which builds toward explanations of how geoscience processes change the surface at different time and spatial scales.
Ch. 9	Lab 2 · Three Sites, One History: When Did the Sea Creatures Vanish? Evidence-based mystery	supports	The sequence records a sea becoming a desert, then a river plain; students read these surface changes from rock type as background for the Grade 7 standard on surface change over time.
Ch. 11	Lab 1 · The Crystal Clock: Measuring a Change Too Slow to Watch Physical model	practice	Students produce a rate from their own measurements and multiply it by a long span, which is the reasoning MS-ESS2-2 requires for slow surface processes. The crystal is a model of an Earth process, not an Earth process itself, so this builds toward the explanation rather than assessing it.
Ch. 11	Lab 2 · Case File: Pinecrest Valley. Which Processes Shaped It, and How Fast? Evidence-based mystery	assesses	The final written explanation requires students to name specific processes, cite evidence, assign each a space and time scale, distinguish gradual processes from sudden events, and order them, which is the performance expectation as written. The teacher can score it directly against the assessment criteria.
Ch. 11	Lab 3 · How Fast Is Our Campus Changing? A Field Survey of Rates Classroom field investigation	assesses	Students construct an explanation of how specific processes (frost and root weathering, water erosion, deposition) are changing specific campus features, supported by their own measurements and rates, and extend the reasoning to longer time scales. This is the 'small and slow' end of the PE with student-collected evidence, which the PE's practice explicitly allows.
Ch. 16	Lab 2 · The Paper Seafloor: Pull a Ridge Apart and Read Its Age Bands Physical model	supports	Converting a model rate of 2 cm per tick into 20 km per million years and 2 cm per year gives students the scale sense that a process too slow to see can open an ocean; the fuller explanation of surface change at many scales belongs to Lesson 11 and Lesson 17.
Ch. 17	Lab 2 · The Unlabeled Box: Twelve Samples, Three Sites, No Names Evidence-based mystery	practice	Assigning samples to sites and explaining, for example, why an intrusive rock is found at the surface beside its own sand, is a small-scale version of explaining surface change from evidence. The time-scale comparison in the PE is not addressed here.
Ch. 26	Lab 1 · Tilt, Soak, Slide: When Does a Model Hillside Fail? Physical model	supports	The tray shows a slope staying put for a long time and then changing in seconds once a threshold of angle or water is crossed, a small-scale example of the sudden surface change the clarification statement describes.