Mississippi Science E.8.7.2

Science8th GradeEarth and Space Science

The Standard

E.8.7: Students will demonstrate an understanding of geological evidence to analyze patterns in Earth’s major events, processes, and evolution in history.

Create a model of the processes involved in the rock cycle and relate it to the fossil record.

2026 Mississippi College- and Career-Readiness Standards for Science · Earth’s Structure and History

Teacher's field guide

What Students Need to Do: Build a model that shows how rocks change through weathering, deposition, heat, melting, and cooling. Show where buried remains may become fossils.
What Mastery Looks Like: Students can trace more than one path between igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic rock, naming the process at each step. They place fossils in sedimentary layers and explain how heat can erase fossil evidence.
Common Misconceptions: Students often draw a fixed loop where every rock must pass through every rock type. They may think fossils form in any rock, or that every buried shell becomes a fossil.
How to Assess It: On an exit ticket, draw a path from igneous rock to fossil-bearing sedimentary rock. Label weathering, erosion, deposition, compaction, and cementation, then explain what heat might do to the fossil.

Lesson moves

Press a shell into clay, remove it, cover the imprint with a second clay layer, and press gently to model burial and compaction.
Show photos of fossil-bearing shale and granite, then ask, “Which rock is more likely to preserve an ancient shell, and why?”
Give pairs rock-type and process cards; have them build two valid rock-cycle paths and place a fossil token where it could survive.
Show a photo of marine fossils in Grand Canyon limestone; ask how burial and uplift put seafloor remains above sea level.

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