Educators' Corner

A series of lesson plans that help students understand the properties of the deep sea including hydrostatic pressure and ocean zones.

This activity is meant to provide students with an understanding of how microbes play a role in the climate system, from the formation of the atmosphere to current climate dynamics to the role of microbes in climate change. This activity can be done within a unit on microbes, microbial oceanography or as a stand-alone activity connected to climate change. The activity is meant to be completed in one class period (60-minute minimum) but could be extended.

Food webs demonstrate complex feeding relationships among species in an ecosystem by combining several food chains. Scientists use food webs to demonstrate the fragile and interconnected nature of an ecosystem. This activity demonstrated the complexity of a food web and what can happen when one component of a food web is altered.

This lesson plan develops concepts on food webs and ecological relationships, giving special attention to microorganisms and Chesapeake Bay species and dynamics. Students will conduct investigations, generate their own data and find out more about species they constantly see!

This middle school science curriculum contains five lesson plans related to ocean modeling, including the fields of biogeochemistry, fluid dynamics, and microbiology.

Students will be able to describe major features of cold seep communities; list at least five organisms typical of these communities; infer probable trophic relationships among organisms typical of cold-seep communities and the surrounding deep-sea environment; describe the process of chemosynthesis in general terms; contrast chemosynthesis and photosynthesis; and describe at least five deep-sea predator organisms.

This lesson is created to stress the idea of interrelationships among organisms and how this can effect the surrounding environment. This lesson also goes step by step through the scientific approach to developing and implementing a scientific research study. Students are expected to write their own ideas about the best way to investigate the scientific questions provided, and compare their ideas to those of the actual researcher.

Students will be able to explain light in terms of electromagnetic waves and explain the relationship between color and wavelength; compare and contrast color related to wavelength with color perceived by biological vision systems; explain how color and light may be important to deep-sea organisms, even under conditions of near-total darkness; and predict the perceived color of objects when illuminated by light of certain wavelengths.

This group of lesson plans focuses on primary production in the ocean via photosynthesizers, like plankton and algae. Students will learn what factors limit primary productivity in the ocean and about other ways ocean organisms produce energy (i.e. chemosynthesis). 

Students describe forms of energy found in the ocean and explain how they are used by humans. Students explain three ways that energy can be obtained from the ocean.