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.
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.
Mapping the Ocean Floor
COSEE-Central Gulf of Mexico
After an introduction in which students try to identify hidden objects by the sounds they make when shaken in a box, students use string to map a model ocean floor by taking depth readings to simulate sonar.
Oceans of Energy
NOAA Ocean Explorer
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.
Prince William's Oily Mess - A Tale of Recovery
NOAA Ocean Service Education
How does an ecosystem recover from a major one-time insult such as an oil spill? As you will learn from this Discovery Story, the answer is not simple. It isn't easy to determine whether a particular area of shoreline has recovered from oil during a spill, or how to expect it to look when it has.
Rock Eaters of the Gulf of Alaska
NOAA Ocean Explorer
Students will be able to compare and contrast the processes of photosynthesis and chemosynthesis; identify and describe sources of energy used by various organisms for chemosynthesis; predict what chemosynthetic reactions might be possible in selected extreme environments.
Sea Surface Temperature and Coral Bleaching
NASA
Students will learn about how ocean temperature increase can be a cause of coral bleaching.
Secrets of the Sediments
Deep Earth Academy/ Consortium for Ocean Leadership
In this activity, students graph and analyze data from sediments collected off the coast of Santa Barbara, California to determine whether this information can be used to study historical climate change.
Self Contained Gulf Oil Spill Kit
The Ocean and You
A kit you can create to help your students understand the impacts of the Gulf Of Mexico oil spill. Easily contained in a box so clean up is easy...as compared to oil spills in real life!
Symbiosis and Coral Anatomy
NOAA Coral Reef Conservation Program
Students read and then present to the class about different types of symbiosis. They are then introduced through a PowerPoint presentation to the coral-zooxanthellae relationship.
The Methane Circus
NOAA Ocean Explorer
Students will describe the overall events that occurred during the Cambrian Explosion; explain how methane hydrates may contribute to global warming; and describe the reasoning behind hypotheses that link methane hydrates with the Cambrian explosion.