History Channel's How the Earth Was Made: Birth of the Earth Video Worksheet

History Channel's How the Earth Was Made is a wonderful documentary series about geology and earth science. In the episode titled "Birth of the Earth," the series presents evidence for the age of the Earth and its early development. The episode is set up as a type of detective story, with evidence shown to back up hypotheses.

The video worksheet is a one sided handout consisting of 22 multiple choice questions that track the progress of the video. This format enables the students to pay attention to the video while quickly recording their answers. In this way, the students are not bogged down in writing long responses, and they can better enjoy watching the video. A key is included, and the files are provided in both MS Word and PDF formats. You will need to obtain a DVD of the video or find an internet site for streaming.

Topics include dating the age of the Earth using meteorites, the formation of the moon, the first oceans and continents, the origin of life, and the development of Earth's oxygen-rich atmosphere. Some early attempt to date the Earth are described such as Bishop Ussher's Biblical chronology and Ernst Rutherford's application of radioactive dating to Earth rocks.

Other topics include the impact theory of the moon's origin, the delivery of water and amino acids to the early Earth via meteorites (Allende meteorites in particular), the oldest known rocks on Earth (located in Hudson Bay, Canada), C.C. Patterson's dating of meteorites from Meteor Crater, Arizona, and the introduction of significant oxygen into Earth's atmosphere after the evolution of photosynthetic cyanobacteria found as ancient coral-like growths known as stromatolites. Modern day stromatolites are also shown in Mexico.

In summary, this episode represents a nice overview of theories of the early Earth and its development.

Other Resources:

A Google Forms, self-grading quiz of the video questions can be found here. (Note: Access to the Google Quiz requires an extra payment.)

A Google Doc version of the video questions can be found here. (Note: Access to the Google Doc requires an extra payment.)

The video is available for streaming on the History Channel's official YouTube site. (Please make sure that the video is accessible before purchasing this TPT resource.)