What if you could challenge your ninth graders to use geologic theory and standards of measurement to explore different epochs and time periods of the Earth's formation? With this volume in the STEM Road Map Curriculum Series, you can!

Formation of the Earth outlines a journey that will steer your students toward authentic problem solving while grounding them in integrated STEM disciplines. Like the other volumes in the series, this book is designed to meet the growing need to infuse real-world learning into K–12 classrooms.

This interdisciplinary, three-lesson module uses project- and problem-based learning to help students investigate how Earth science professionals gather information and develop theories about the formation of the Earth and the processes taking place since the proliferation of humans. Working in teams, students will work to identify, define and describe the attributes scientists use to delineate Earth's eras, periods, and epochs, in order to determine the appropriate boundary event to define the Anthropocene Epoch, and will develop a publication-ready textbook entry for an Earth science textbook. To support this goal, students will do the following: