Lesson Plan — ILAW · Science 10
Term 1 · Week 2 · Domain: Earth and Space Science · CG Quarter 1, competency 2
⚠️ The field list is reported, not read. The four section names are consistent across sources; the sub-fields a given division expects may differ. See
source-catalogue.md§8.
This is the whole week. For Day 1 at teaching depth, see
lesson-plan.md.
| Learning Area | Science |
| Grade Level | Grade 10 |
| Term and Week | Term 1, Week 2 |
| CG source | Quarter 1, competency 2 (p. 61) |
| Sessions | 5 × 45 minutes |
| Medium of instruction | English |
| Resources | slides.html · game.html · worksheet.html · worksheet-remediation.html · wall-chart.html · offline-activities.md |
| Format | ILAW — DO No. 009, s. 2026 |
I — INTENTIONS
The competency for this week
CG Quarter 1, competency 2: describe the structures, movements and events that occur at each type of plate boundary.
Three nouns and two words that decide the week. Structures, movements and events means three things are wanted for every boundary, not one. And each type means the three named types — with convergent counted properly, because convergent behaves in three different ways depending on what kind of crust is arriving.
Why it sits in Week 2
Week 1 is competency 1 — the modern processes used to detect and measure plate displacement. That week establishes that the plates are moving, measurably, now. It does not say what happens where they meet, and a class that has been told the plates move and not what that does is in an uncomfortable place: the fact is in front of them with no consequences attached.
Week 3 needs this week completely. Competency 3 asks learners to find this country's mountains, faults, volcanoes and trenches on a map and interpret those features in relation to plate tectonics. Interpreting a trench requires knowing what makes one. A class that arrives at Week 3 without this week can locate the features and cannot read them, which turns a tectonics lesson into a labelling exercise.
Weeks 4 to 7 also assume it. Week 4 predicts the archipelago's position in 50 million years and asks what drives the plates; Week 5 asks what subduction does to the plate above and how the Himalayas and Andes formed — which is this week's three-kinds-of-convergence distinction, assessed. From Week 6 the quarter turns to climate and does not come back.
So this week sits at the narrowest point in the quarter: everything before it is one competency and everything after it depends on it.
Success criteria for the week
By the end of the week, the learner:
- names the three boundary types and says which way the plates move at each
- gives the structure, the movement and the events for a named boundary — all three
- distinguishes ocean–continent, ocean–ocean and continent–continent convergence, and says why they build different things
- states that the asthenosphere is solid rock that flows, and gives the seismic evidence
These four are the tick boxes on observation-card.html.
II — LEARNING EXPERIENCES
| Day | Focus | What happens | Resources |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Three ways, and one of them is three ways | Apart, toward, past — modelled with two sheets of paper and two books at every desk. The continent–continent model at minute twenty-two, and the question where is the trench? | lesson-plan.md · slides 1–13 · worksheet.html |
| 2 | Structures, movements, events | The three-by-three table built by the class rather than copied. Each group takes one boundary, fills one row, and defends it to the class. Nothing goes on the board that a group cannot justify. | Activity 1 in offline-activities.md · slides 4–11 |
| 3 | The three kinds of convergence | The whole session on one boundary type. Three models, three results, and the Andes and the Himalayas side by side on the board. This is the day the week is won or lost. | Activity 2 · slides 6–9 · game.html Round 2 |
| 4 | What is underneath, and what moves it | The convection bowl. Solid-looking material circulating with nothing melting, and the seismic evidence that the asthenosphere is not liquid. Then the map of this archipelago, previewing Week 3. | Activities 3 and 4 · slides 12–13 |
| 5 | Consolidation and check | The game, all three rounds. The weekly check. Worksheets returned and ★ discussed at length — it is the item most of the class will have got wrong, and it is two convergent boundaries with opposite answers. | game.html · assessment.md §4 |
The shape of each day
| Part | Minutes | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Two questions | 4 | A boundary on the board; the class calls which way and what crust before anything else |
| Review | 3 | Yesterday's misconception, restated by a learner in their own words |
| Main activity | 26 | The day's focus |
| Into practice | 7 | Worksheet, game, or offline activity |
| Close | 5 | Exit ticket — one boundary, and all three of structure, movement and events |
Every exit ticket this week asks for all three. Not just the name. The competency says structures, movements and events, and a learner who can name a boundary and cannot say what happens there has met one word of a three-word competency.
III — ASSESSMENT
What is looked at, and when
| Instrument | Day | Component it feeds |
|---|---|---|
| Observation card — the learner's exact words | 1–5, continuous | Formative only, no mark |
| Worksheet, Sections A to D | 1 | Written Works |
| The group's row of the class table, and its defence | 2 | Written Works |
| The three convergence models, drawn and annotated | 3 | Written Works |
| Convection-bowl observations | 4 | Formative only, no mark |
| Game record, Round 2 | 5 | Formative only, no mark |
| Weekly check, 7 items | 5 | Written Works |
| Quarter 1 performance task | Week 8 | Performance Tasks |
Weights are 20 / 50 / 30 under DO No. 015, s. 2026 — see
class-record.html, which carries the transmutation year switch.
The rule that governs marking all week
A boundary named is one mark out of three. The competency asks for structures, movements and events, so every item that names a boundary asks for what forms there and what happens there, and carries most of its marks in those two.
This is not a wording rule. Convergent is the correct answer to a great many questions and can be produced by a learner who believes every convergent boundary has a trench — and that learner will score full marks on any paper that stops at the name.
The item that reads
On the weekly check, item 5:
The Andes have a deep trench beside them. The Himalayas have no trench at all. Both are convergent boundaries. Explain the difference.
Items 1 to 4 are answerable from the wall chart.
| What the learner wrote | What it means |
|---|---|
| Oceanic crust is arriving at the Andes and it sinks; the Himalayas have continental crust on both sides and neither sinks | Full understanding |
| One has ocean and one does not, with no mention of sinking | Half. The right distinction, missing the mechanism that makes it matter |
| One is older / bigger / faster | The diagnostic answer. Convergent has been learned as a single thing, and a difference has been invented to explain a difference the learner cannot account for |
| The Himalayas' trench has been filled in | Wrong and worth answering publicly: there was never anything to fill, because nothing sank |
IV — WAYS FORWARD
Remediation
For learners still naming boundaries without saying what forms by Day 3.
worksheet-remediation.html does not ask for a boundary name until
task 2 and does not ask what forms until task 3. Its task 3 is the one that does the work,
because a learner who fills in nothing sinks → no trench for the continent–continent row has
answered the hardest question in the week themselves, in two words.
For learners still saying liquid magma on Day 5.
Do not repeat the explanation. Ask them one question: can an S-wave cross a liquid? They know the answer from Grade 9. Then ask whether S-waves cross the asthenosphere. The contradiction closes itself, and a contradiction the learner closes is worth ten that a teacher closes.
Enrichment
For learners who finish Day 3 early.
Why do earthquakes get deeper with distance inland from a trench? Draw the sinking plate, mark where it is still cold enough to break, and see what the pattern implies about the angle it goes down at. It is competency 6 arriving two weeks early and it needs nothing beyond Day 3.
For learners who have the whole idea by Day 4.
The sea floor is nowhere older than about a tenth of the age of the oldest continental rock. Given that new crust is made only at divergent boundaries, what does that tell you? It is a genuine inference, it is the strongest single argument for subduction, and it can be reached from this week alone.
Teacher reflection
Answer at the end of Friday:
- Write down the Day 1 §C2 count — how many could not say where the trench was in the continent–continent model — and the number who got weekly check item 5 right on Friday. Those two numbers are the week.
- Did every learner handle the paper and the books, or did the class watch a demonstration? A class that watched answers correctly on Monday and reverts by Friday, and the difference is not attention. It is that the buckling is a thing your hands know.
- How many learners asked what kind of crust? without being prompted by Friday? That question is the competency, and asking it unprompted is the only reliable sign it has landed.
Next week
Week 3 needs this week completely. Competency 3 puts this archipelago's mountains, faults, volcanoes and trenches on a map and asks learners to interpret them tectonically. Every feature on that map is a structure from this week's table, and a class without the table can label the map and cannot read it.
Week 5 assesses the hard part again. Competency 7 is the formation of the Himalayas and the Andes — the two examples that only make sense once convergence has been separated into three cases. So this week has a rescue point, and it is three weeks away.
If the class does not have it, the cheapest fix is two minutes a day for the rest of the quarter: one boundary on the board, the class calls which way and what crust, and one learner gives the structure and the events. It costs nothing and it is the only thing that reliably works.
Part of the E-turo MATATAG artifact set. Companion files:
syllabus.md · lesson-plan.md ·
assessment.md · offline-activities.md