WHAT ARE SOME OF EARTH’S LANDFORMS?

What Do You Already Know?

• What is the land around your home like?

• Is it wide and flat?• Does it have rolling hills or steep

mountains?

What Are Landforms?

• A natural land shape or feature is called a landform.

• When you describe the landforms around your town, you are describing the area’s topography. Topography is all the kinds of landforms in a certain area.

Mountains, Hills, and Plains

• Mountains are landforms that are much higher than the surrounding land.

• Hills are like mountains, but not as high.

• Plains are large, flat landforms.

Landforms From Ice

• A glacier is a large, thick sheet of ice.

• As they move, glaciers change the land around and beneath them.

Moraines and Glacial Grooves

• Moraines are long, low hills formed by materials carried by a glacier.

• Glacial Grooves are formed when a glacier scrapes and scratches the rock beneath it.

Landforms of Sand

• A sand dune is a sand hill that is made and shaped by wind.

• Barrier islands are long, narrow piles of sand that help protect the mainland from erosion.

Critical Thinking

• What do you think might happen to a coastline if there were no barrier islands.

• How are sand dunes and moraines different?

Landforms from Water

• A mesa is a tall, flat-topped rock feature that is formed as running water erodes the surrounding rock. Mesa is the Spanish word for table.

• A canyon is a deep valley with steep sides that is created by water erosion.

Reading Review

1. How is the way a mesa forms similar to the way that a canyon forms?

2. What is topography?3. What makes sand dunes and

moraines alike? How are they different?

4. Contrast mountains, hills, and plains. You can draw a picture to answer this question

Hands-On Activity

• You have four packs of play-dough at your table. Use three of the packs to create models of three different types of landforms.

• Pick one of your land forms and use the fourth pack to show me what it would look like in 10,000 years.