Surface Processes and Landscape Change gives Grade 7 science students focused practice explaining how weathering, erosion, transport, and deposition reshape Earth's surface over time. Built around Earth's Systems and framed within the NGSS framework, this resource connects individual surface processes to visible changes in rocks, soil, rivers, coasts, glaciers, and deposited sediments.

Build the Core Earth Science Concepts

Students compare mechanical and chemical weathering and describe how each affects rock and soil. They examine how erosion and transport move sediment, then connect deposition to the formation and modification of landforms. The resource also asks students to consider how rivers, coasts, and glaciers can carve or build landscapes across different timescales.

Stratigraphic sequences and soil profiles extend the thinking beyond individual processes, giving students opportunities to connect layers and profiles with past environments and rates of landscape change.

What Students Work With

• Multiple-choice questions focused on surface processes and landscape change
• True-or-false statements that check conceptual understanding
• Short-answer responses requiring scientific explanation
• A dialogue task that applies Earth science ideas in context
• A matching activity connecting related concepts
• A cloze passage using key vocabulary and ideas
• A labeled diagram requiring students to identify features and processes
• A reading passage followed by questions that apply the content
• An essay requiring extended written reasoning about landscape change

Practical Teacher Support

The resource includes the student worksheet plus a separate Teacher Guide PDF with learning objectives, teaching tips, discussion questions, and common mistakes. This gives teachers a ready reference for introducing the topic, guiding classroom discussion, and addressing misconceptions as students work through surface processes.

Flexible for Earth Systems Instruction

Use the worksheet as classroom practice during an Earth's Systems lesson, independent work after instruction, a review activity, or written evidence of students' developing understanding. The range of response formats provides opportunities to check vocabulary, conceptual reasoning, diagram interpretation, reading comprehension, and scientific writing within one focused Earth science resource.

For teachers covering weathering, erosion, deposition, landform change, and Earth's changing surface, this resource brings these connected processes together while giving students repeated opportunities to explain how landscapes change over different timescales.