Plate tectonics, earthquakes, volcanoes, and mountains are integrated across elementary, middle school, and high school in the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS).

Grade 4 (Elementary)

• Performance Expectation: 4-ESS2-2 – Analyze and interpret map data to describe patterns of Earth’s features, including mountains, volcanoes, and earthquakes.

• Disciplinary Core Idea: ESS2.B (Plate Tectonics and Large-Scale System Interactions) – Students learn that mountain ranges, deep ocean trenches, earthquakes, and volcanoes occur in predictable patterns or bands, usually along the boundaries between continents and oceans.

Middle School (Grades 6–8)

• Performance Expectations:

  • MS-ESS2-2 – Construct an explanation based on evidence for how geoscience processes change Earth's surface at varying time and spatial scales.

  • MS-ESS2-3 – Analyze and interpret data on fossil/rock distributions, continental shapes, and seafloor structures (ridges and trenches) to provide evidence of past plate motions.

  • MS-ESS3-2 – Analyze and interpret data on natural hazards (like earthquakes and volcanoes) to forecast catastrophic events.

• Disciplinary Core Ideas: ESS2.B and ESS1.C – Plate tectonics is introduced as the unifying framework explaining how plate movements shape ocean and continental features, create new seafloor at ridges, and destroy old seafloor at trenches.

High School (Grades 9–12)

• Performance Expectation: HS-ESS2-1 – Develop a model to illustrate how internal and surface processes (volcanism, tectonic uplift, orogeny, weathering) operate at different scales to form landforms like mountains, valleys, trenches, and ridges.

• Disciplinary Core Idea: ESS2.B – Plate tectonics is treated as the foundational theory explaining past and present rock movements, the distribution of crustal rocks and minerals, and feedback loops in Earth systems.