Mountain Building (6-12)
Overview of the box
Concepts and Standards
Lessons:
1 Why do mountains
look the way they do?
2 How to make a mountain
Activities:
1 Investigating shape
2 Folded mountains
3 Fault block mountains
4 How thick is it?
3 Erosion: What goes up
must come down
4 What are you made of:
rock composition & rock cycle
5 Location and Setting:
Plate tectonics & mountains
6 Mountain histories:
a culminating activity
Online resources
Student Web Page
Teaching Boxes Home
Lesson 2: How to Make a Mountain

Activity 1

Investigating Shape

Materials / Preparation

Grouping

Groups of four

Teacher tips

You will need the Mountain Photo Archive throughout this unit. We suggest that you print out the images (in color if possible) and then laminate them or put them in plastic page protectors so they will not get damaged as students handle them.

Some students will group the mountains according to vegetation or snow cover; make sure they focus on shape.

To make this activity less challenging, allow the students to place the mountain in more than one group.

Procedures

  1. Divide the class into groups of four and distribute copies of the Mountain Photo Archive to each group, or project the mountain images to show the entire class.

  2. Ask the class questions such as:
    • Do all of thee mountains look the same? (Answer: No)
    • What are some of the ways that these mountains differ (Answer: Accept all answers and then zero in on shape.)
    • What do you think accounts for the varying shapes seen in these mountains?
    • Can we group them in some way according to their shapes?
  3. Ask the students to group the mountains by shape, to think about what might be responsible for these different shapes, and to record their ideas on page 6 of their Mountain Building Journal. You may need to suggest categories such as: steep slope, gentle slopes, rounded, jagged, flat-topped.
    a. Allow about 20 minutes for students to group the mountains and to generate their hypotheses that could explain the shapes for each group of mountain. Remind the groups to focus on the overall shape of the mountains and the category they fit best in, rather than individual details of each mountain.
    b. Have each group of students share their mountain-group categories and their hypotheses that explain the different shapes.
    c. Write the student responses down (overhead or white board) and save for later.
    d. Discuss similarities and differences in how the student teams decided to group the mountains.
  4. Guide the resulting discussion towards the idea that mountains are shaped not only by mountain building processes but also by erosion.

Resources used

Mountain Photo Archive
http://www.teachingboxes.org/lessons/mountainSlides/MountainPhotoArchive.pdf

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

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