Alabama Social Studies SS24.AS.1a
The Standard
- SS24.AS.1
- Identify the location of Alabama’s major geographic regions and describe the characteristics that distinguish them from each other.
Summarize how the geography and biodiversity of Alabama formed and evolved during the Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and Cenozoic Periods.
2024 Alabama Course of Study: Social Studies · Geography
Teacher's field guide
What This Standard Means
What Students Need to Do
- Students build a timeline of how Alabama’s land and living things changed across three geologic eras. They use rocks and fossils to identify ancient seas, coal swamps, mountain building, and later rivers and forests.
What Mastery Looks Like
- Students place coal swamps and Appalachian uplift before Cretaceous seas and chalk deposits. They describe how later rivers and shifting coastlines changed habitats, using a rock or fossil as evidence.
Common Misconceptions
- Students may think coal came from dinosaurs rather than swamp plants. They may assume Alabama stayed underwater throughout its history. They may also treat fossils found in the same state as the same age.
How to Assess It
- Give students a blank three-era timeline. Ask them to place coal swamps, Cretaceous chalk with marine shells, and later river-shaped habitats, then explain what one clue reveals about past life.
Lesson moves
Ways to Teach It
Groups place limestone, coal, chalk, shell, and swamp-plant cards on a three-era timeline beside an Alabama map.
Ask: What do coal and marine shell fossils tell us about how Alabama’s habitats changed?
Read clues such as “chalk with marine shells” and “coal from swamp plants”; pairs hold up era cards and explain their choices.
Find Selma on a map and use a photo of nearby chalk beds to explain why marine fossils turn up there.
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Printable SS24.AS.1a Worksheet
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Related Standards
- SS24.AS.1
Identify the location of Alabama’s major geographic regions and describe the characteristics that distinguish them from each other.
- SS24.AS.21
Explain the interrelationship among geography, natural resources, and the development of Alabama’s economy from the early nineteenth century into the early twen...
- SS24.AS.2
Explain how Alabama’s geography contributes to the biodiversity of the state.
- SS24.3.6
Describe how Alabama’s environment has been positively and negatively affected by human activity over time.
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