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What Are Glaciers?

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What Are Glaciers?
Reading Level

	edHelper's suggested reading level:	grades 3 to 5
	Flesch-Kincaid grade level:	3.89

Vocabulary

	challenging words:		continental, glacial, meltwater, landforms, gravity, mass, piles, meets, layer, packs, rocks, stays, deposit, fastest, downhill, world
	content words:		North America, Great Lakes, South Poles, Glacier National Park

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What Are Glaciers? By Cindy Grigg

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¹     In some parts of the world, it is cold enough that snow doesn't ever melt. It stays on the ground. It piles up year after year. The weight of the snow packs the bottom layers into ice. The weight squeezes the bottom layers of icy snow. It begins to melt a little. The whole mass of snow and ice begins to slide because of the melted, slippery bottom layer. Gravity causes it to move downhill. The moving mass of ice and snow is a glacier.
 
²     About ten percent of Earth's surface is covered by glaciers today. But during the ice ages, a large part of North America was covered by glaciers. Some of the landforms we see today were made by glaciers. The Great Lakes were carved out by glaciers over 10,000 years ago!
 
³     Today, many glaciers are found in Antarctica, Greenland, Iceland, Alaska, Canada, and Russia. They are called continental glaciers. Continental glaciers are large. They are found on land near the North and South Poles. They move very slowly.
 
⁴     Glaciers are also found on high mountain peaks in most parts of the world. These areas are covered by snow all year long. Glaciers found at high elevations in mountains are called valley glaciers. Montana's Glacier National Park has valley glaciers. Valley glaciers are found on every continent except Australia. Valley glaciers tend to move more quickly because of gravity.

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