Essential Questions:
- How has the surface of our planet changed over time?
- What clues are provided to show that the surface of our planet has changed?
Materials (per 2-3 students): I make these ahead of time to save time in class and I can reuse them for each class.
- Foam Board
- Glue stick
- Disposable scalpel or sharp craft knife
- USGS landmasses (Pangaea activity PDF)
- Blue construction paper
- Ziptop bag
Procedures:
Preparation
- Print out and glue landmasses to a piece of foam board
- Carefully cut out each land mass and fossil key
- Place into zip-top bag
Class Activity
- Have students place the landmasses into their current geographic positions on top of the blue construction paper.
- What do they notice about the landmasses? Discuss.
- Ask students: “Do you think you can make one large landmass using the clues provided?”
- After a few minutes, check on their progress, what did they do first? What was giving them difficultly? Encourage students to try alternate possibilities.
- Discuss findings, what possibilities did they come up with?
- Ask students how the landmasses moved to their current position- accept all possibilities.
- Ask students: “Are the landmasses are still moving?”
- Show “Animated Life: Pangea” by the NYTimes
- Have students try to create Pangea again.
- Discuss.
The Pangaea Pop-Up video is a great video to show also:
Middle School Science Blog 
Lovely activity Miss Liz! Thanks for sharing
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🙂
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When I try to open a Read-Only activity
it says I need a password? I signed up to receive your blog posts, but I’m not sure about a Password? Thanks…love your work.
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Lauren, you can download and open any of the read only ppts without the password, they just can’t be edited. I put passwords in to stop edits being made and then posted to other websites, like Teachers Pay Teachers. Glad you enjoy the site! ~ Liz
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