Why Do Mountains Look the Way They Do?

This lesson serves as an introduction to mountains and how they are shaped. It is meant to prepare students for the lessons to follow. Students articulate what they know about mountains and identify information they would like to discover about mountains. The teacher can use this to assess current knowledge and also to determine what misconceptions the students might have (for example: all cone shaped mountains are volcanoes).

Materials / Preparation

• Overhead film or large sheets of paper (butcher paper).
• One copy of the Mountain Building Journal for each student. Students will use pages 4 and 5 in the journal. Requires Adobe Reader and may take a while to open (the file is 3 MB).

Grouping

Groups of 4 and whole class

Teacher Tips

Students record their ideas in the Mountain Building Journal and we provide suggested answers in the Mountain Building Journal: Teacher's Guide.

Procedures

1. Hand out a copy of the Mountain Building Journal to each student
2. Explain to students that they will be studying how mountains form. They will be learning about the forces that form and shape mountains and they will be asked to make entries in their journals after each lesson. Let them know that the Journals are important because they will provide an information tool kit that will be useful in completing the final activity.
3. You or a student should read the introduction on page 1 aloud from the journal:

Congratulations! You have just landed a summer internship working for National Geographic magazine. Your assignment is to create an informative photo essay about Mountains. How will you make the story of these mountain come alive for the magazine's readers? What would National Geographic readers want to know about these mountains? What kinds of questions do you have about mountains? What do you need to know in order to write about mountains?

4. On an overhead or butcher paper make two columns. What You Know and What You Want to Know. (When completed, save and post this resource for students to refer to throughout the unit.)
   a. Break the class into small groups (groups of 4 is ideal). Have the groups brain storm the following questions and then have the students record their ideas on pages 4 and 5 in the Mountain Building Journal:
   • What do you know about Mountains?
   • What do you want to know about mountains?

b. Have the groups share their entries with the class, record all student ideas organized according to know and want to know on the overhead or butcher paper.

5. After students have generated a list of questions, highlight the ones that correlate with the three questions listed below. Suggest to the students "Let's focus our investigation on just these questions" and highlight any of their ideas that are linked to the following:
   • What can the shape of a mountain tell us about its history?
   • What does the composition and structure of a mountain tell us about how it formed?
   • What can the location and setting of a mountain tell us about how it formed?
     
6. Continue the discussion by suggesting "Focusing on each of these questions will help you to understand the mountains in your photo essay."

NOTE: The goal of closing this lesson is to make sure students end the day excited about the mysteries of mountains and energized to investigate them further. One way to do this would be for you to show a picture of your favorite mountain (potentially selected from the enclosed photographs, but perhaps from the Internet or vacation photos). Tell students why you like it, emphasizing the questions above. Tell students that you are excited to explore the history of your mountain along with them

Resources used

Introduction to the Lithosphere: Mountain Building
http://www.teachingboxes.org/catalog.jsp?id=DLESE-000-000-005-415

Mountain Building Journal
http://www.teachingboxes.org/mountainBuilding/lessons/journal/MBJournal.pdf

Mountain Building Journal: Teacher's Guide
http://www.teachingboxes.org/mountainBuilding/lessons/journal/MBJournal_teacherGuide.pdf