The Fifth Grade MARE curriculum
includes themes of global interconnectedness of the oceans
and the productivity that supports large animals of the
seas. The brief descriptions below will provide a sense of
the Open Ocean activities. For a more detailed description,
download a PDF file of the Synopsis
and Key Concepts of each activity.
Download a session-by-session
timeframe for teaching
Open Ocean
Download the National or California
State Science Education
Standards Correlation for the Open Ocean curriculum
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Students
work in pairs, using an apple and a circle graph
to represent the planet. They carefully section the
apple and the graph into wedges representing various
critical resources on the planet.
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Students
participate in a wide-ranging brainstorm about what
they already know, value, and enjoy about the ocean.
They work in teams to explore a globe using a global
exploration worksheet as a guide. |
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Students discuss their personal experiences
with currents and then make predictions about the best
and worst locations in the ocean to dispose of waste
from imaginary countries. They test their ideas with
a simple model of an ocean and continents. |
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Cooperative
student groups examine the relationship between temperature,
salinity, and density as rotate through three different
activities and experiments set up as stations. |
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| Temperature
and salinity are combined to look at the interactions
that create ocean currents. Students make predictions
about whether ice cubes will melt faster in fresh water
or salt water and explain their reasoning. |
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Students observe, sketch and categorize
a diversity of plankton from video footage and transparency
cutouts and focus on the adaptations to slow down how
fast they sink. Students then construct plankton models
from materials of various shapes and densities to simulate
adaptations, which slow sinking. |
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Students work in pairs to dissect a
squid and investigate its adaptations: its structure
and how all the parts function together to allow the
squid to survive and thrive in its open-ocean environment.
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IStudents explore evolution, natural
selection, and adaptation by examining the highly specialized
features and behaviors of whales.
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Students research an open ocean
organism, complete a page for the class Field Guide,
and
participate in presentations to the class. Students
then transform the classroom into an open ocean as
they create 3-dimensional organisms.
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