What if you could challenge your eighth graders to help people recognize the inherent risks of living in a region that’s prone to flooding, earthquakes, and volcanoes? With this volume in the STEM Road Map Curriculum Series, you can!

The Changing Earth outlines a journey that will steer your students toward authentic problem solving while grounding them in integrated STEM disciplines. Like the other volumes in the series, this book is designed to meet the growing need to infuse real-world learning into K–12 classrooms.

This interdisciplinary, six-lesson module uses project- and problem-based learning to introduce the powerful idea that the Earth is shaped by ongoing geologic processes that can alter our landscape in a short time. The module also helps students appreciate the nature and process of science, including the roles of evidence, conjecture, and modeling. Students will learn about the rock cycle, including how it’s driven by the Sun’s energy and heat from the Earth’s core. To support this goal, students will do the following:

Learn that Earth is a dynamic system, shaped by many geological processes that are driven by energy from the Sun and internally from the Earth.
Build a model to explain the evidence suggesting that the Earth’s surface has changed in the past and will continue to change in the future. This model will include explanatory text as well as visual representations of processes.
Evaluate claims based on provided evidence.
Use mathematics content and skills to collect and analyze data to support or refute a claim, and use appropriate graphics or tables to summarize data.
Create a museum display to explore the geology of an area in North America or Great Britain. Students’ displays will include scale models of influential rock formations in their assigned area and posters about topics such as geology’s impact on culture and community.


The STEM Road Map Curriculum Series is anchored in the Next Generation Science Standards, the Common Core State Standards, and the Framework for 21st Century Learning. In-depth and flexible, The Changing Earth can be used as a whole unit or in part to meet the needs of districts, schools, and teachers who are charting a course toward an integrated STEM approach.