Our Ocean Portal Educators’ Corner provides you with activities, lessons and educational resources to bring the ocean to life for your students. We have collected top resources from our collaborators to provide you with teacher-tested, ocean science materials for your classroom. We hope these resources, along with the rich experience of the Ocean Portal, will help you inspire the next generation of ocean stewards.
Featured Lesson Plans
Keeping Watch on Coral Reefs
Students learn why coral reefs are important, and what can be done to protect them from major threats.
Long Live the Sharks and Rays
Students will learn about adaptations that have helped sharks and rays survive. Students will explore similarities and differences between sharks, rays and other fish and that different types of sharks and rays have different temperaments and diets and that some of the largest sharks and rays are the most gentle.
Focus on Farmer Fish
In this two part lesson, students gain a deeper understanding of the relationship between environmental factors and organism adaptations through a focused study on a specific coral reef denizen—the personable farmerfish. Students first take part in an interactive PowerPoint presentation to gain background knowledge and then apply learned concepts by participating in a board game.
Search Lesson Plans
Find lessons/activities by topic, title or grade levels. Sort by newest or alphabetically. Lessons were developed by ocean science and education organizations like NOAA, COSEE, and NMEA to help you bring the ocean to your classroom.
Grade Level
Lesson Subject
It’s Not Just the Core that Tells the Hole Story
Deep Earth Academy/Consotrium for Ocean leadership
Students read about “down-hole logging” technology, in which instruments are lowered from the drilling ship into the hole after cores have been removed to measure physical properties that reveal more about sea floor sediments and rocks. They then examine sample logs to note patterns and interpret the data.
It’s Sedimentary, My Dear Watson
Deep Earth Academy/Consortium for Ocean Leadership
In this introductory activity, students analyze core sample data to identify sediment composition on the ocean floor. They use Google Earth to make their own qualitative observations that help them determine the types of sediments that make up the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.
Jelly Critters: Gelatinous zooplankton
NOAA
In this activity, students will be able to compare and contrast at least three different groups of organisms that are included in ‘gelatinous zooplankton’, describe how gelatinous zooplankton fit into marine food webs, and explain how inadequate information about an organism may lead to that organism being perceived as insignificant.
Learning Ocean Science Through Ocean Exploration
NOAA Ocean Explorer
A curriculum for teachers of Grades 6-12 that takes lesson plans that were developed for NOAA Voyages of Discovery and the Ocean Explorer Web Site and presents them in a comprehensive scope and sequence through subject area categories that cut across individual expeditions.
Let’s Make a Tubeworm
NOAA Ocean Explorer
Students will be able to describe the process of chemosynthesis in general terms; to contrast chemosynthesis and photosynthesis; describe major features of cold seep communities; and list at least five organisms typical of these communities. Students will be able to define symbiosis; describe two examples of symbiosis in cold seep communities; describe the anatomy of vestimentiferans; and explain how tubeworms obtain their food.
Life of a Coral Reef Fish
COSEE – Central Gulf of Mexico
To synthesize a lesson on coral reefs, students write first person narratives as though they were reef organisms including their daily lives and the threats facing themselves and their communities.
Light at the End of the Deep, Dark Ocean
DEEPEND
Students will experience the impact of bioluminescence on finding food and finding prey in the ocean. Students will be able to describe the positive and negative values of being able to produce light.
Light in the Deep
Deepend
How are deep sea animals adapted to their environment? Students will explore one camouflage strategy of deep sea animals through an in-depth examination of light properties in ocean waters.
Long Live the Sharks and Rays
Discovery
Students will learn about adaptations that have helped sharks and rays survive. Students will explore similarities and differences between sharks, rays and other fish and that different types of sharks and rays have different temperaments and diets and that some of the largest sharks and rays are the most gentle.
Loop Current of the Gulf of Mexico
COSEE-Central Gulf of Mexico
This activity can be used for the study of currents with special attention on the Loop current of the Gulf of Mexico.