How Snowy 2.0 unearthed an ancient mystery
The unit begins with the phenomenon of discovering a coral reef, or the fossil of one, buried in the Snowy Mountains during excavation for Snowy 2.0. Students investigate the properties of different rocks to explore how they hold clues about Earth’s past and reveal how landscapes have changed over millions of years. This exploration shows how much is going on beneath our feet and why large infrastructure projects, like Snowy 2.0, rely on geology and environmental science to understand the ground they are built on. Tracing the evidence of this ancient coral reef highlights how studying rocks can uncover the history of our planet while informing the future of engineering projects.
Lesson guiding video
Kara and Tanya will guide you through this lesson, introducing the other-worldly discoveries they encountered while digging a tunnel for Snowy 2.0. Use this video to introduce the lesson and pause and play as you need to discuss the amazing concepts introduced.
After conducting the practical investigation, Tanya and Kara will walk you and your students through how their discoveries during the in-class activity relate to real life industry problem solving.
Key information
Learning area: STEM
Suitable for: year 5-6 classrooms
Topics: geology, engineering
Duration: 60-80 minutes
Preparation: for activity
Materials: Household materials
Resources
All teaching resources
This folder contains all teacher and student resources for this unit. By downloading this folder, you won’t need to download the individual files below.