During the launch of our unit, we've becoming so curious about how mountains like the Himalayas, and specifically the peak of Mt. Everest can be shifting and growing annually. We also realized that this phenomenon is not isolated to Everest alone, but that other mountains around the world experience the same thing. We also saw that some mountains, like the Appalachians, which used to be taller than Mt. Everst, are actually shrinking annually! We purposefully sat down, documented our questions and each 8th grader publicly said a question they were interested in investigating. Boy do we have so many incredible questions!
From here, we dedicated time to figuring out how we could actually answer these questions by coming up with possible investigation ideas. This was a heavy lift for students, especially as they had to think beyond research/googling things on the internet. While scientists certainly research, the vast majority of their work doesn't involve just looking up answers. I am so proud of these kids! Check out their investigation ideas!
Next steps: Figure out more about earthquakes by using real data from both Everest and other places that experience them, too! Do all places that have mountains have earthquakes? Are these events correlated? Do earthquakes cause mountains to grow? Shrink? Man, we've got a lot of figuring out to do!