Plate Motion and Boundaries

Plate Motion @Home Lesson 8

Standards:

ESS1.C: The History of Planet Earth: Tectonic processes continually generate new ocean sea floor at ridges and destroy old sea floor at trenches. (HS.ESS1.C GBE) (secondary to MS-ESS2-3) ESS2.B: Plate Tectonics and Large-Scale System Interactions: Maps of ancient land and water patterns, based on investigations of rocks and fossils, make clear how Earth’s plates have moved great distances, collided, and spread apart. (MS-ESS2-3)

NGSS Practices Practice 2: Developing and Using Models, Practice 4: Analyzing and Interpreting Data, Practice 6: Constructing Explanations and Designing Solutions, Practice 7: Engaging in Argument from Evidence, Practice 8: Obtaining, Evaluating, and Communicating Information

Objectives:

Students analyze and interpret evidence about the relationships between geologic activity and landforms (patterns) at the plate boundary between the South American Plate and the African Plate. They do this in order to explain how the Mesosaurus fossils got so far apart. Students also create visual models showing how the plates move and the effect of this movement on rock from the mantle (cause and effect) at this divergent plate boundary.

In this lesson you should be looking for:

• Patterns

• Cause & Effect

Poll

Do you think that this plate boundary is convergent or divergent?

• Convergent (collides)

• Divergent (different directions)

Multiple Select

What do you see along the plate boundaries? (check ALL that apply).

• Food

• Volcanic eruptions

• earthquakes

• mid-ocean ridge

Open Ended

What happens to the plates and the mantle at convergent plate boundaries, as plates move toward each other?

Multiple Choice

When one plate moves under the other (convergent), what landform forms?

• mid-ocean ridge

• trench

Open Ended

What happens to the plates and the mantle at divergent plate boundaries, as plates move away from each other?

Multiple Choice

When plates move away from each other (divergent), what landform forms?

• Trench

• A bad break up

• Mid-Ocean Ridge

Poll

With our new clues, which type of plate boundary do you think is between the South American Plate and African Plate?

• Divergent

• Convergent

Open Ended

Which piece of evidence was most convincing in helping you determine the type of plate boundary between these two plates?

Multiple Choice

What patterns do you notice that happen at divergent boundaries?

• earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, mid-ocean ridges

• earthquakes, trenches, volcanoes

• Earthquakes and trenches

• Movement because of TikTok videos

Open Ended

How can we use our understanding of how the plates move at this divergent plate boundary to explain why the Mesosaurus fossils that were once together are now 4,000 kilometers apart?

Multiple Choice

How does the landform evidence refute (go against) the claim that the plate boundary is a convergent plate boundary?

• there is a mid-ocean ridge at this plate boundary rather than a trench

• there is a trench at this plate boundary rather than a mid-ocean ridge

  HIDE ANSWER

Multiple Choice

To examine in detail for a purpose

• convergent

• analyze

• microscope

Click on the Schoology Page

Click on the puzzle piece. You will follow the directions and draw using different colors to answer each question.

Multiple Choice

What direction are these plates moving?

• Divergent (different directions)

• Convergent (colliding; towards each other)

Open Ended

How does this model show what you know about the plates so far?