Unit 1: Estuaries
- 1. Where Rivers Meet the Sea
- Students make a physical model of fresh and salt water layering in an estuary.
- 2. Waterborne
- A student reading with embedded questions about buoyancy of ships in different waters (e.g., fresh, salt, warm, cold).
- 3. Plimsoll Floats
- Students shape boats of modeling clay and test their boats’ abilities to carry a load in fresh water and in salt water.
- 4. The Great Boat Float
- A take home activity in which family members shape boats from aluminium foil and test buoyancy in fresh and salt water.
- 5. Tide’s In/Tide’s Out
- Students make a paper model which includes a graph of tide heights vs. time of day.
- 6. Time and Tides
- Students learn to read a tide table and to describe tidal differences using a 24 hour clock.
- Unit 2: Plants and Crabs
- 1. Whose Home?
- Each student takes on a role (i.e., moon, water, eelgrass, crab…) enacting movements and behaviors representing the rise and fall of the tides.
- 2. In the Eelgrass Bed
- Students working in groups explore the eelgrass food web using a picture sheet, animal fact cards, and a reading with embedded questions.
- 3. What Grows There?
- Some plants can tolerate salt water. Students experiment by irrigating seedlings, some with fresh water, some with salty.
- 4. Crab City
- This reading provides a look at how humans make a living along our coasts and how marine animals are adapted to their environments.
- 5. Crabs
- This activity reviews material introduced in “Crab City” by providing a crab diagram for labeling, and questions about the diagram.
- 6. What a Story!
- Students order the mixed-up events in a story which follows the life of crabs from egg to our dinner table.
- 7. Scrambled Crab
- Students unscramble the mixed-up letters of crab terms, using the definitions of the terms as clues.
- 8. Observing the Living Crab
- Students observe crabs swimming, walking, digging, hunting, and eating.
- Unit 3: Shrimp
- 1. Shrimp – No Small Wonder
- This reading focuses on shrimp anatomy and life cycle while continuing a look at how humans make a living along our coasts. Students make calculations regarding costs of shrimping.
- 2. Only Half The Story
- Students choose words about shrimp biology and fishing from a list to fill in blanks in a story.
- 3. The Shrimp Boats Are A-Coming
- Commercial shrimping provides livelihoods for many people. Students practice solving word problems, including challenge problems involving calculating averages and percents.
- 4. How Hot Is Too Hot?
- Students experiment to see how varying an environmental factor (temperature) affects hatching rate for brine shrimp eggs.
- 5. Observing Brine Shrimp
- Students use hand lenses and/or microscopes to observe compound eyes, gills, swimming behavior, response to light, and more.
- Unit 4: Birds
- 1. Who Flies There?
- Students sort bird pictures into groups with common characteristics to gain an appreciation of diversity.
- 2. An Assortment of Beaks
- Students, equipped with one of four “beaks” (spoon, scissor, clothespin, or tweezer), take on the role of foraging birds and gather “food” types.
- 3. Beaks and Feet
- Students match a set of beak and feet cards, representing a variety of estuarine birds, with different food types and feeding areas.
- 4. Who’s Hiding There?
- Students search for camouflaged objects and relate their experience to bird survival in an estuary.
- 5. Dangerous Journeys
- Students assume the roles of ducks, wind storm, predators, and hunters to examine migration hazards.
- 6. Migrating Down the Flyway
- Students examine factors which limit or favor migration survival, measure migration distance on a map, then calculate migration duration.
- Unit 5: Food Webs
- 1. Who’s For Dinner?
- Students play a card game in which each card represents an organism, and can only be “taken” by a card of the next food web level.
- 2. Pyramids in the Marsh
- Students calculate grams of food needed by each member of a marsh food chain/pyramid.
- 3. Construct an Estuary
- Students review adaptations and interactions by constructing a habitat model. Stuffed-crab plans included.
- Unit 6: Clams
- 1. Shell Sort
- Students use size, shape, texture, color and weight to sort and classify shells. A student-made balance (ruler on an eraser) helps gauge weight.
- 2. More Than a Few Clams
- This reading, with crossword puzzle review, introduces clam biology, harvesting and marketing.
- 3. Regulating the Harvest
- This puzzle describes the reasons for rules such as filling in the holes made by clam diggers, and leaving oyster shells at the beach.
- 4. Gooey Ducks?
- Students use math skills to explore geoduck growth, population size, and rate and impact of harvesting.
- 5. Insides Out
- Students construct, label, and explore relationships between parts of a three dimensional paper model of a clam.
- 6. Open Sesame
- Steamed clams, from the beach or supermarket, give students an opportunity to match actual structures with models and drawings presented in preceding lessons.
- 7. Write All About It! A Creative Clam Story
- Students practice creative writing skills as they synthesize a clam story. The stage is set by showing a picture of a clam and its predator.
- Unit 7: Oysters
- 1. Oysters on the Half Shell
- Students are full of insightful questions after being challenged to find a particular half shell, and then its mate, in a pile of oyster shells.
- 2. Folding Oysters
- Students put together oyster finger puppets while learning about oyster anatomy and physiology.
- 3. The Oyster Story
- A student reading with embedded questions about oyster aquaculture, harvesting and marketing provides a logical follow-up to “Oysters on the Half Shell”.
- 4. Red Tides
- Students learn what Red Tide is and isn’t, and how to avoid poisoning.
- 5. Shellfish at Risk
- Students play a board game matching contamination SOURCES, the PROBLEMS these lead to, and the SOLUTIONS people can employ.
- 6. Red Sea Star Cafe
- In this participatory simulation, students work as teams to “open” and “operate” a seafood restaurant.
- Unit 8: People and Estuaries
- 1. Where Have All the Salt Marshes Gone?
- Students role play salt-marsh species faced with a shrinking habitat.
- 2. National Estuaries of Significance
- Students create metaphors denoting the features of estuaries, and use clues, such as salt or fresh water sources, to locate reserves on a map.
- Production Credits
Below, you’ll find helpful resources for use with the above activities.
- Unit 1: Estuaries
- Activity 1 Where Rivers Meet the Sea
- Estuary – a link to the sea
- Estuary environments
- Estuaries – a description
- Activity 2 Waterborne
- Root words
- Activity 5 Tide’s In/Tide’s Out
- Tidal chart activity
- Unit 2: Plants and Crabs
- Activity 2 In the Eelgrass Bed
- Eelgrass bed slide show
- Eelgrass bed slide show narrative
- Activity 4 Crab City
- Blue crab image
- Unit 3: Shrimp
- Activity 3 The Shrimp Boats Are A-Coming
- Shrimp boat image
- Activity 4 How Hot Is Too Hot?
- A brine shrimp primer
- Unit 4: Birds
- Activity 4 Who’s Hiding There?
- Shorebird outline masters
- Unit 5: Food Webs
- Activity 1 Who’s For Dinner?
- Food chain cards 1
- Food chain cards 2
- How to find marine information
- Unit 6: Clams
- Activity 2 More Than a Few Clams
- The clam business
- Activity 4 Gooey Ducks?
- Native American geoduck clam harvesting image
- Diver suiting up image
- Turn of the century clam collecting image
- Geoduck clams ready to ship to market image
- Geoduck dive boats
- Geoduck clam image
- Activity 7 Write All About It! A Creative Clam Story
- The Clam Caper mystery
- Unit 7:
- Activity 3 The Oyster Story
- Native American oyster harvesting
- Working on the water
- Oyster recovery
- Oyster hatchery
- An oyster disease story
- Activity 4 Red Tides
- Killer dinoflagellate fact sheet
- Toxic red tides – why now?
- Tracing a toxic tide
- Reef fish
- Activity 6 Red Sea Star Cafe
- Red Sea Star slide show
- Red Sea Star slide show narrative
- Unit 8: People and Estuaries
- Activity 2 National Estuaries of Significance
- Chesapeake Bay – a model estuary guidebook
- Chesapeake Bay Ecosystem
- Geology Of The Chesapeake
- Water & Sediments
- Habitats
- Living Resources & Biological Communities
- Food Production & Consumption
- Preserving Chesapeake Bay: The Big Picture
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