Performance Expectations

ESS2 help students formulate an answer to the question: “How and why is Earth constantly changing?” The ESS2 Disciplinary Core Idea from the NRC Framework is broken down into five sub-ideas: Earth materials and systems, plate tectonics and large-scale system interactions, the roles of water in Earth’s surface processes, weather and climate, and biogeology. For the purpose of the NGSS, biogeology has been addressed within the life science standards. Students develop models and explanations for the ways that feedbacks between different Earth systems control the appearance of Earth’s surface. Central to this is the tension between internal systems, which are largely responsible for creating land at Earth’s surface, and the sun-driven surface systems that tear down the land through weathering and erosion. Students begin to examine the ways that human activities cause feedbacks that create changes to other systems. Students understand the system interactions that control weather and climate, with a major emphasis on the mechanisms and implications of climate change. Students model the flow of energy between different components of the weather system and how this affects chemical cycles such as the carbon cycle. The crosscutting concepts of cause and effect, energy and matter, structure and function and stability and change are called out as organizing concepts for these disciplinary core ideas. In the ESS2 performance expectations, students are expected to demonstrate proficiency in developing and using models, planning and carrying out investigations, analyzing and interpreting data, and engaging in argument; and to use these practices to demonstrate understanding of the core ideas.

Calculation Method for DCI

Disciplinary Core Ideas are larger groups of related Performance Expectations. So the Disciplinary Core Idea Grade is a calculation of all the related Performance Expectations. So click on the Performance Expectation name below each Disciplinary Core Idea to access the learning targets and proficiency scales for each Disciplinary Core Idea's related Performance Expectations.

Clarification Statement: Earth Science: Emphasis is on how the appearance of land features (such as mountains, valleys, and plateaus) and sea-floor features (such as trenches, ridges, and seamounts) are a result of both constructive forces (such as volcanism, tectonic uplift, and orogeny) and destructive mechanisms (such as weathering, mass wasting, and coastal erosion).
Disciplinary Core Ideas
ESS2.A: Earth Materials and Systems -Earth’s systems, being dynamic and interacting, cause feedback effects that can increase or decrease the original changes.
ESS2.B: Plate Tectonics and Large-Scale System Interactions -Plate tectonics is the unifying theory that explains the past and current movements of the rocks at Earth’s surface and provides a framework for understanding its geologic history. Plate movements are responsible for most continental and ocean-floor features and for the distribution of most rocks and minerals within Earth’s crust.

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Clarification Statement: Earth Science/Environmental Science: Examples should include climate feedbacks, such as how an increase in greenhouse gases causes a rise in global temperatures that melts glacial ice, which reduces the amount of sunlight reflected from Earth's surface, increasing surface temperatures and further reducing the amount of ice. Examples could also be taken from other system interactions, such as how the loss of ground vegetation causes an increase in water runoff and soil erosion; how dammed rivers increase groundwater recharge, decrease sediment transport, and increase coastal erosion; or how the loss of wetlands causes a decrease in local humidity that further reduces the wetland extent.
Disciplinary Core Ideas
ESS2.A: Earth Materials and Systems -Earth’s systems, being dynamic and interacting, cause feedback effects that can increase or decrease the original changes.
ESS2.D: Weather and Climate -The foundation for Earth’s global climate systems is the electromagnetic radiation from the sun, as well as its reflection, absorption, storage, and redistribution among the atmosphere, ocean, and land systems, and this energy’s re-radiation into space

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Clarification Statement: Earth Science: Emphasis is on both a one-dimensional model of Earth, with radial layers determined by density, and a three-dimensional model, which is controlled by mantle convection and the resulting plate tectonics. Examples of evidence include maps of Earth’s three-dimensional structure obtained from seismic waves, records of the rate of change of Earth’s magnetic field (as constraints on convection in the outer core), and identification of the composition of Earth’s layers from high-pressure laboratory experiments
Disciplinary Core Ideas
ESS2.A: Earth Materials and Systems -Evidence from deep probes and seismic waves, reconstructions of historical changes in Earth’s surface and its magnetic field, and an understanding of physical and chemical processes lead to a model of Earth with a hot but solid inner core, a liquid outer core, a solid mantle and crust.
ESS2.B: Plate Tectonics and Large-Scale System Interactions -The radioactive decay of unstable isotopes continually generates new energy within Earth’s crust and mantle, providing the primary source of the heat that drives mantle convection. Plate tectonics can be viewed as the surface expression of mantle convection.

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Clarification Statement: Earth Science: Examples of the causes of climate change differ by timescale, over 1-10 years: large volcanic eruption, ocean circulation; 10-100s of years: changes in human activity, ocean circulation, solar output; and 10-100s of thousands of years: changes to Earth's orbit and the orientation of its axis.
Disciplinary Core Ideas
ESS1.B: Earth and the Solar System -Cyclical changes in the shape of Earth’s orbit, along with changes in the tilt of the planet’s axis of rotation have altered the intensity and distribution of sunlight falling on the earth.
ESS2.A: Earth Materials and System -The geological record shows that changes to global and regional climate can be caused by interactions among changes in the sun’s energy output or Earth’s orbit, tectonic events, ocean circulation, volcanic activity, glaciers, vegetation, and human activities.
ESS2.D: Weather and Climate -The foundation for Earth’s global climate systems is the electromagnetic radiation from the sun.

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Clarification Statement: Earth Science/Environmental Science: Emphasis is on mechanical and chemical investigations with water and a variety of solid materials to provide the evidence for connections between the hydrologic cycle and system interactions commonly known as the rock cycle. Examples of mechanical investigations include stream transportation and deposition using a stream table, erosion using variations in soil moisture content, or frost wedging by the expansion of water as it freezes. Examples of chemical investigations include chemical weathering and recrystallization (by testing the solubility of different materials) or melt generation (by examining how water lowers the melting temperature of most solids).
Disciplinary Core Ideas
ESS2.C: The Roles of Water in Earth's Surface Processes -The abundance of liquid water on Earth’s surface and its unique combination of physical and chemical properties are central to the planet’s dynamics. These properties include water’s exceptional capacity to absorb, store, and release large amounts of energy, transmit sunlight, expand upon freezing, dissolve and transport materials, and lower the viscosities and melting points of rocks.

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Clarification Statement: Earth Science/Environmental Science: Emphasis is on modeling biogeochemical cycles that include the cycling of carbon through the ocean, atmosphere, soil, and biosphere (including humans), providing the foundation for living organisms.
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ESS2.D: Weather and Climate -Gradual atmospheric changes were due to plants and other organisms that captured carbon dioxide and released oxygen. Changes in the atmosphere due to human activity have increased carbon dioxide concentrations and thus affect climate.

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Clarification Statement: Earth Science: Emphasis is on the dynamic causes, effects, and feedbacks between the biosphere and Earth’s other systems, whereby geoscience factors control the evolution of life, which in turn continuously alters Earth’s surface. Examples include how photosynthetic life altered the atmosphere through the production of oxygen, which in turn increased weathering rates and allowed for the evolution of animal life; how microbial life on land increased the formation of soil, which in turn allowed for the evolution of land plants; or how the evolution of corals created reefs that altered patterns of erosion and deposition along coastlines and provided habitats for the evolution of new life forms
Disciplinary Core Ideas
ESS2.D: Weather and Climate -Gradual atmospheric changes were due to plants and other organisms that captured carbon dioxide and released oxygen.
ESS2.E Biogeology -The many dynamic and delicate feedbacks between the biosphere and other Earth systems cause a continual coevolution of Earth’s surface and the life that exists on it

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