Oceans

Using the book “Over in the Ocean: In a Coral Reef” by Marianne Berkes, read and discuss the different action verbs. Use your body and senses to act out the verbs.

Find similes and other examples of figurative language examples related to the ocean, waves or sea life and share them aloud. For a lesson plan related to this activity, see As Slippery As An Eel: An Ocean Unit Exploring Simile and Metaphor.

Write an opinion piece concerning ocean pollution, oceans and climate change, the mining of resources from the ocean, or the use of wave energy. Research the topic before forming your opinion and adequately support your argument.

Using toy fish or fish crackers, distribute a large number of items on an ocean mat. Count the number of fish you can collect in your hand in one grab.

Create flashcards using sea life stickers. Make several sets of identical images. Create arrays to portray products as groups of sets, e.g. 7 tidepools, each containing 5 starfish.

Place sea life stickers on intersecting lines of graph paper. Identify the numbered pairs that correspond to the stickers’ locations. For examples: Identify the numbered pairs for the seahorse, the shark, the dolphin, etc.

Sunlight warms Earth’s surface. Earth’s surface includes water.

All animals need food in order to live and grow. They obtain their food from plants or from other animals. Plants need water and light to live and grow.

Plants and animals can change their environment.

Living things live in places that have the things they need.

Things that people do can affect the world around them. People can reduce their effects on the land, water, air, and other living things. Examples of human influence on the water could include keeping plastic trash out of waterways. Designs can be conveyed through sketches, drawings, or physical models. These representations are useful in communicating ideas for a problem's solutions to other people.

There are many different kinds of living things in any area, and they exist in different places on land and in water. The emphasis is on the diversity of living things in each of a variety of different habitats.

Some events happen very quickly; others occur very slowly, over a time period much longer than one can observe. An example is the erosion of rocks by water, which occurs slowly.

Wind and water can change the shape of the land. Examples of solutions could include different designs of dikes to hold back water. Because there is always more than one possible solution to a problem, it is useful to compare and test designs.

Maps show where things are located. One can map the shapes and kinds of land and water in any area.

Water is found in the ocean, rivers, lakes, and ponds.

Changes organisms go through during their life form a pattern.

Being part of a group helps animals obtain food, defend themselves, and cope with changes. Groups may serve different functions and vary dramatically in size.

Examples of evidence could include needs and characteristics of the organisms and habitats involved. The organisms and their habitat make up a system in which the parts depend on each other.

Climate describes a range of an area's typical weather conditions and the extent to which those conditions vary over years.

A variety of natural hazards result from natural processes. Humans cannot eliminate natural hazards but can take steps to reduce their impacts. An example of design solutions to a natural hazard could include barriers to prevent flooding.

Waves, which are regular patterns of motion, can be made in water by disturbing the surface. When waves move across the surface of deep water, the water goes up and down in place; there is no net motion in the direction of the wave except when the water meets a beach.

Animals have various body systems with specific functions for sustaining life: skeletal, circulatory. respiratory, muscular, digestive, etc.

Different sense receptors are specialized for particular kinds of information, which may be then processed by the animal’s brain. Animals are able to use their perceptions and memories to guide their actions.

Examples of evidence from patterns could include rock layers with marine shell fossils above rock layers with plant layers and no shells, indicating a change from land to water over time.

Maps can include topographic maps of Earth's land and ocean floor. The locations of mountain ranges, deep ocean trenches, ocean floor structures, earthquakes, and volcanoes occur in patterns. Most earthquakes and volcanoes occur in bands that are often along the boundaries between continents and oceans.

Energy and fuels that are modified from natural sources affect the environment in multiple ways. Some energy resources are renewable over time, and others are not. Examples of renewable energy could include wind and wave energy.

A variety of hazards result from natural processes, (e.g. earthquakes, tsunamis.) Humans cannot eliminate the hazards but their impacts can be reduced. Testing a solution involves investigating how well it performs under a range of likely conditions.

The energy released from food was once energy from the Sun. The energy was captured by plants in the chemical process that forms plant matter. Food provides animals with the materials they need for body repair and growth and the energy they need to maintain body warmth and for motion.

Fossils provide evidence about the types of organisms that lived long ago and also about the nature of their environments. Examples of fossils and environments could include marine fossils found on dry land and fossils of extinct organisms.

When the environment changes in ways that affect a place’s physical characteristics, temperature, or availability of resources, some organisms survive and reproduce, others move to new locations, yet others move into the transformed environment, and some die. Populations live in a variety of habitats, and change in those habitats affects the organisms living there.

Matter cycles between the air and soil and among plants, animals, and microbes as these organisms live and die. Organisms obtain gases and water from the environment, and release waste matter back into the environment. Some organisms, such as fungi and bacteria, break down dead organisms (both plants and animals) and therefore operate as decomposers. Decomposition eventually restores (recycles) some materials back to the soil.

Earth's major systems are the geosphere (solid and molten rock, soil, and sediments), the hydrosphere (water and ice), the atmosphere (air), and the biosphere (living things, including humans). These systems interact in multiple ways to affect Earth's surface materials and processes. The ocean supports a variety of ecosystems and organisms, shapes landforms, and influences climate.

Nearly all of Earth's available water is in the ocean.

Human activities in agriculture, industry, and everyday life have effects on the land, vegetation, rivers and oceans. Individuals and communities can often mitigate these effects through innovation and technology.

Plants, algae (including phytoplankton), and many microorganisms use the energy from light to make sugars (food) from carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and water through the process of photosynthesis. These sugars can be used immediately or stored for growth or later use.

Organisms, and populations of organisms, are dependent on their environmental interactions both with other living things and with nonliving factors. Growth of organisms and population increases are limited by access to resources. Emphasis is on cause-and-effect relationships between resources and growth of individual organisms and the numbers of organisms in ecosystems during periods of abundant and scarce resources.

Emphasis is on predicting consistent patterns of interactions in different ecosystems in terms of the relationships among and between organisms. Although the species involved in these competitive, predatory, and mutually beneficial interactions vary across ecosystems, the patterns of interactions of organisms with their environments are shared.

Food webs are models that demonstrate how matter and energy is transferred between producers, consumers, and decomposers as the three groups interact within an ecosystem. Transfers of matter into and out of the physical environment occur at every level. Decomposers recycle nutrients from dead plant or animal matter back to the water in aquatic environments.

Ecosystems are dynamic in nature; their characteristics can vary over time. Disruptions to any physical or biological component of an ecosystem can lead to shifts in all its populations. Emphasis is on recognizing patterns in data and making warranted inferences about changes in populations, and on evaluating empirical evidence supporting arguments about changes to ecosystems.

Biodiversity describes the variety of species found in Earth's terrestrial and oceanic ecosystems. The completeness or integrity of an ecosystem's biodiversity is often used as a measure of its health. Changes in biodiversity can influence humans' resources, such as food, energy, and medicines, as well as ecosystem services that humans rely on. There are systematic processes for evaluating solutions with respect to how well they meet the criteria and constraints of a problem. Examples of design solution constraints could include scientific, economic, and social considerations. 2023

Maps of ancient land and water patterns make clear how Earth's plates have moved great distances, collided, and spread apart. Examples of data include the shapes of the continents (including continental shelves), and the locations of ocean structures (such as ridges, fracture zones, and trenches). Tectonic processes continually generate new ocean sea floor at ridges and destroy old sea floor at trenches.

Water continually cycles among land, ocean, and atmosphere via transpiration, evaporation, condensation and crystallization, and precipitation, as well as downhill flows on land. Global movements of water and its changes in form are propelled by sunlight and gravity. Emphasis is on the ways water changes its state as it moves through the multiple pathways of the hydrologic cycle.

The complex patterns of the changes and the movement of water in the atmosphere, determined by winds, landforms, and ocean temperatures and currents, are major determinants of local weather patterns. The ocean exerts a major influence on weather and climate by absorbing energy from the sun, releasing it over time, and globally redistributing it through ocean current. Variations in density due to variations in temperature and salinity drive a global pattern of interconnected ocean currents. Emphasis of ocean circulation is on the transfer of heat by the global ocean convection cycle, which is constrained by the Coriolis effect and the outlines of continents.

Examples of natural hazards can be taken from interior processes (such as earthquakes), surface processes (such as tsunamis), or severe weather events (such as hurricanes). Examples of data can include the locations, magnitudes, and frequencies of the natural hazards. Examples of technologies can be global (such as satellite systems to monitor hurricanes) or local.

Human activities can positively and negatively influence the biosphere, sometimes altering natural habitats and ecosystems. Technology and engineering can potentially help us best manage natural resources as populations increase. Examples of the design process include examining human interactions and designing feasible solutions that promote stewardship. Examples can include water usage, land usage, and pollution (such as of the air, water, or land.)