Educators' Corner

Students identify three chemicals that are pharmacologically active and are derived from marine invertebrates. Students describe disease-fighting action of these chemicals. Students infer why sessile marine invertebrates appear to be promising sources of new drugs.

In this two-part lesson, students will compare and contrast the adaptive strategies of branching coral and mounding coral through participation in an interactive PowerPoint and a hands-on lab activity. Students complete a note-taking guide during the PowerPoint that provides background information to be used during the lab. In the lab activity, teams of 4 students construct different corals out of paper and test the design stability against physical disturbance.

This lesson introduces the idea of interrelationships among organisms and how these could help them persist in a coral reef ecosystem. Students will learn about symbiotic relationships, with mutualism among coral and zooxanthellae as the model organisms in the first lesson and then moving on to parasitism and mutualism. Topics include the transfer of energy and matter through the processes of photosynthesis and respiration. These concepts are approached through the marine environment, rather than the terrestrial environment, which allows most students to take a step out of their comfort zone. Teaching these concepts with examples from the coral reef ecosystem is also a great way to incorporate ocean literacy into the classroom.

This lesson works well as an introduction or review of these processes. Please implement additional classroom activities that will complement the concepts discussed in this unit. This unit was written primarily for seventh graders, but adjustments can be made to fit any grade level.

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.

Students will play a game in order to learn about predator-prey relationships, a simple food chain, and the coral reef ecosystem. Students will act the parts of various reef fishes, to explore the relationship between predators and their prey. When the lights are on, damselfish emerge from hiding in the reef to forage for food. At night, however, individual damselfish race against one another to find shelter in the reef. Damselfish that do not successfully find refuge at night may be eaten by nocturnally feeding squirrelfish. Squirrelfish do not come out to eat during the day for fear of being eaten by their predators, large emperors. These predator-prey relationships are altered as the coral reef habitat is damaged by pollution throughout the game. A follow-up PowerPoint is available on the MCR LTER education website to emphasize the concepts introduced in this lesson in a more formal format. Download the supplementary PowerPoint. 

This book is filled with activities about the humpback whales of the Hawaiian Islands Humpback National Marine Sanctuary, with information about whale identification, migration, behavior, and information on cetaceans in general.

The activity covers feeding behaviors of humpback whales. It also teaches how baleen whales differ from toothed whales.

In this series of lessons, worksheets, and activities, students will get acquainted with the habits, biology, and range of the giant squid. Students will understand the challenges in finding a “relatively small” giant squid within a vast and deep habitat and will also learn about the ever-improving technological resources needed to find a live giant squid.

Students will be able to list the various adaptations that enable deep-sea fishes to survive; explain how bioluminescence helps deep-sea fish respond to food predator and reproductive pressures in their environments; explore how the structure of an appendage helps determine and utilize its function; describe how deepwater organisms respond to their dark environment.

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.