OpenSciEd Unit 6.5 · Lesson 02 · 2.C
Look for: ideas about a causal relationship between sha…
From Teacher Edition
Facilitation guidance from the lesson plan — what to notice in student thinking and how to respond while teaching.
Building towards
2.C Integrate quantitative and qualitative scientific information to connect cause-and-effect relationships to predict communities at risk for future tsunami occurrence.
What to look / listen for
ideas about a causal relationship between shallow, strong earthquakes along colliding boundaries and the formation of tsunamis (and specifically, tsunami wave height increasing)
predictions that communities in regions where these types of earthquakes occur are most at risk, and that communities in regions that don’t have these earthquakes are not likely to experience tsunamis
What to do
Students’ revised predictions are a good indicator of how well they have incorporated the new ideas about cause-and-effect relationships between earthquakes and tsunamis. If students struggle with updating predictions, ask these questions:
Are communities along the Atlantic coast at risk for tsunamis? Why not? (Tsunamis haven’t happened there; they don’t have high-magnitude earthquakes; it is a spreading boundary in the middle of the Atlantic.)
- Where would we find earthquakes that are strong enough and shallow enough to possibly form a tsunami? Let’s look back at the data again...
- Another option to help students piece together the evidence from all three data sources is to include a cause-and-effect diagram during the day 2 whole-class share out, to make the relationship more visible.