How One Storm Changes a Beach, Order the Steps

Pour water slowly over a bare pile of soil and then over soil with grass or leaves on top, and compare what washes away. Ask your child which solution on the page would help most. Check each page with the answer key.

Order how storm winds make big waves that carry sand away and leave a smaller beach by morning. A fast change is a change to land that happens quickly. The directions on the page read: Read the passage. Then, turn the page, fill in the flow chart and answer the questions. On page 2: Write the steps from the Step Bank in boxes 1 to 4 in order. Then, circle the letter of the best answer for questions 5 and 6 and write the answer to question 7 on the lines. The answer key covers the questions on page 2.

Yes, both. We made it for 2nd Grade Earth and water, and the page works the same whether it lands on a kitchen table or a center rotation. At home, most families go through it together and talk the answers out loud, and that talking is where most of the learning happens with weathering and erosion. In class it runs well as independent work while you pull a small group. Print one copy or thirty, whichever the day needs.

Weathering breaks rock into smaller pieces, like when water freezes in a crack, pushes it wider and after many winters splits the rock. Erosion carries the pieces away, like when waves pull sand off a beach or rain washes soil off a bare hill.

People plant grass and trees, because roots twist together like a net and hold the soil. Farmers cut terraces into steep hills so rainwater slows down, people plant beach grass and stay off dunes, and rows of spruce trees slow the wind that blows soil off fields (2-ESS2-1).

Usually slow. Waves can take many years to wear away a beach, and water takes many thousands of years to make a cave. But a flood or one strong storm can change land in a single day or night (2-ESS1-1).

Yes. All 12 weathering and erosion sheets have an answer key.