Alternate Initial Model

1.A.2 Develop a model showing what is happening at a scale larger than we can see to explain what happened to the different mountains to cause them to change in elevation.

• Students including a variety of mechanisms for the changes to cause a mountain to shrink such as: snow melting up on the mountain top, strong wind moving the mountain, (tectonic) plates under the mountain, and earthquakes separating mountains.
• Any ideas students have at this point in the unit are acceptable. Over the course of the unit all of these will be explored through figuring out what tectonic plates are and how they move, as well as weathering and erosion factors.

If a student is struggling to get started on their model, remind them that our initial model is just that - our first attempt at explaining what we think is causing the changes to the mountains. Encourage students to look back at the initial model they developed for Mt. Everest and think about what they would change in the model to represent a decrease in elevation.