Archive | Odds and Ends

Hello Everyone!  I am glad to say that we had a great day at RU IMCS on Tuesday!  It was really nice to see that there are still many teachers interested in the incorporation of the Ocean Literacy topics into their curricula.  I’d like to start things up again but from a different perspective.

Over the years we have been using the MARE lessons as a key part of a whole school or large format program.  Times have shifted and it seems that we have an opportunity to rekindle the incorporation of Ocean Literacy by targeted “mini-lessons” and materials into our classrooms.  This can look very different from school to school and from class to class.  I think that this would be a great place for us to start.  Remember, we don’t have to reinvent the wheel here, just look at our existing curriculum from a different perspective.

How do you envision using Ocean Literacy topics in your classroom or program?  I’d really like to know, we heard some great examples from our session on Tuesday but we didn’t get to hear from everyone.  Please feel free to chime in and let the community know what you are up to!!

–MWG

Rutgers University’s Institute of Marine & Coastal Sciences is committed to working with our partners in K-12 schools to ensure that every child gains a broad understanding of the importance of the ocean, especially its influences on the economy, climate, biodiversity, our food sources, and to the overall quality of our lives.

The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) represent an historic opportunity to advance the goal of improving public understanding of the vital role the ocean plays in all our lives. This is a matter of great economic, social, and scientific importance to all Americans. Hundreds of scientists and educators nationwide have joined together in the Ocean Literacy Campaign to ensure that ocean concepts are part of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS).

In order to most effectively support school and district level implementation of the Standards, the NJDOE is working with a network of volunteers (including myself) to develop a “model” curriculum (1.0) beginning with unit-based student learning objectives and formative unit assessments. This “model” curriculum will serve as an exemplar for districts and schools as they work to design the curriculum that will best meet the needs of the students they serve.

Here are some key ocean ideas we hope to bring to the forefront of our work with NJDOE:

• There are aspects of life in the ocean and of ocean processes that are quite unique and unlike their counterparts on land and in the atmosphere.

• There often appears to be a default assumption that science exists exclusively in a terrestrial environment.

• In some cases, using ocean examples can simply provide a more full understanding of a complex concept; in other cases, the omission of ocean examples can lead to misconceptions or even factual incorrectness. For example, referring to “organisms” as “plants, animals, and microorganisms” might lead learners to ignore the important ecological role of macro-algae, or to think that algae are plants, or worse yet, to never know that algae exist.

• We are very pleased that finally (and rightfully) emphasis is being placed on understanding the causes and consequences of climate change. Rutgers is actively communicating the critical importance of the influence of the ocean on the climate, and vice-versa, the influence of the changing climate on the ocean.

– Janice McDonnell, SET Agent 4-H Youth Development

Ever wonder why there are so many bacteria out there or whether they are all bad?
Interested in learning more about current New Jersey ecological research to teach your students?
Want to spice up your teaching of MARE’s “Bird Beak Buffet” or expand your teaching of “The Great Plankton Race”?

It is here! The next Ocean Lecture & Educators’ Night…

Who: Dr. Lee Kerkhof

When: March 29, 2012 ~ 6-8:30pm

Where: Rutgers Cook Campus, IMCS building

How do I learn more information and register? Visit the Dr. Lee Kerkhof Ocean Lecture & Educators’ Night page.

We hope to see you there!
Thanks, the MARE team

I wanted to make you aware that we have extended the deadline for registering for Rutgers Ocean Days to next Friday, February 17th.

What is Rutgers Ocean Days? – A chance to bring your students to Rutgers for a day of ocean science!
Rutgers Ocean Days brings Marine Activities Resources & Education (MARE) students (grades 3-8) from public, private, and informal science education programs to Rutgers University to celebrate their scientific accomplishments in the MARE program (April 2-3, 2012).

The goal of Rutgers Ocean Days is to excite and engage students in ocean science by providing a platform for them to share results from their science investigations with one another and Rutgers scientists. This event encourages students to develop questions and participate in an inquiry-based scientific investigation that builds upon the knowledge they have learned from the MARE curriculum.  Through their investigations, students will become actively engaged in ocean science rather than just learning the content, and will be able to act as science communicators and peer educators.

Bring your students and join in the fun! More information about the event can be found on the MARE website and in the attached flyer. Post the flyer around your school to encourage your colleagues to also bring their students.

Interested in registering for the event? Register Here

We hope to see you and your students in April!
Kristin

Background Information, Lesson Plans, and Dr. Jensen’s presentation now up on the MARE website

We have posted all of the materials from the Jan 19th Ocean Lecture & Educators’ Night on-line for you to use:

1. Background Information: We compiled optional background information about the topics covered during the event. The categories include: Glossary & Acronym, Fisheries, Fish Science, and Black Sea Bass.
2. Ocean Lecture Presentation: We posted the merged audio file and Dr. Jensen’s presentation slides so you can download the talk in its entirety or specific sections.
3. Lesson Plans: We have compiled additions and adaptations to previous lesson plans to incorporate the fisheries, fish science, Black Sea Bass information that was presented during Dr. Jensen’s talk into your classroom. The lesson plans are provided as .pdf as well as a short description, list of grade levels, and relevant NJ Science Standards are highlighted. The categories include: Fisheries, Fish Science, and Black Sea Bass.

Enjoy! Let us know what you think or if there is additional information that would help you teach the material with your students.

-MARE Team

Jason Draine posted this to the “Join us for a FREE Ocean Lecture & Educator’s Night” Event listing on the COSEE NOW website on 1/20/12. I wanted to copy the post over to the MARE blog to invite more of the community to join in the conversation. What do you think?

The Lawrence Hall of Science at the University of California at Berkeley worked extensively with scientists at Rutgers University and University of San Diego, the East Coast MARE team, scientists and educators at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and many others to develop the “GEMS® Ocean Science Sequence for Grades 3-5.”

The curriculum materials provide teachers and students opportunities to conduct their own investigations about the oceans. In addition, the materials highlight the oceanographic expedition of Dr.s Oscar Schofield, Josh Kohut, and Scott Glenn as an autonomous underwater glider makes the first crossing of the Atlantic Ocean!

All of the materials are grounded in the new national Science Standards.

To learn more about the “GEMS® Ocean Science Sequence for Grades 3-5” visit the website at https://lhsgems.org/OceanSciSeq.htm.

Phytoplankton produce half of the oxygen we breathe and are the base of the ocean food web! So they provide a great topic for lessons about the oceans.

In the Xu et al. (2011) paper , researchers determined that it was the amount of light and nutrients that determined when and where we observe large blooms of phytoplankton from North Carolina up to Massachusetts (see the What’s Hot in Ocean Sciences article in the Winter 2011 newsletter for a summary of the paper https://coseenow.net/mare/newsletter/winter2011/ or see below for a copy of the paper).

But what does that mean for your students? How can you incorporate some of this research into your classroom? Below I have developed a way to bring up these topics (Introducing these Topics) and then provided a list of multiple phytoplankton lesson plans that you can use with your students (Phytoplankton Lesson Plans).

Introducing these Topics

Take time to talk with your students about why it is important for phytoplankton to “stay” near the surface sunlight for photosynthesis. Help your students understand that the two things that phytoplankton, like all plants, need to survive are: energy from the sun and nutrients. Help the students understand that the need for sunlight and nutrients explains our observations of varying amounts of phytoplankton in different parts of the ocean and at different times of year.

First talk about the energy from the sun, ask the students if light from the sun penetrates everywhere equally in the ocean (no, only in the photic zone). Then ask the students if sunlight penetrates into the ocean to the same depth every day (no, if it is stormy). Ask the students if they think these two factors effect where and when phytoplankton bloom (yes). Then you can use a map of the Atlantic Ocean to show students one of the findings from the Xu et al. (2011) paper: that there are blooms in phytoplankton biomass off of the east coast in the spring (when it is sunnier than the winter).

Next talk with your students about nutrients. As organisms (e.g., phytoplankton, zooplankton, fishes) die in the ocean they often sink to the seafloor where they are decomposed into nutrients. This process results in a pool of nutrients near the seafloor. Use questions about what the students know about plankton sinking to help them realize that there would be a build up of nutrients at the bottom of the water column (the pool of nutrients). The nutrients do not float to the surface on their own, but rather are brought to the surface when the water column is mixed (meaning water at the surface mixes with water near the seafloor). Two main processes can drive this mixing: 1) the cooling of sea surface temperatures to temperatures more similar to the bottom waters (when there is a large difference in temperature this creates a thermocline in the water column and water of different temperatures “act” like two separate water bodies, aka no mixing) and 2) storms over the ocean churn up the water at the surface, which results in mixing of the water throughout the water column. The Xu et al. (2011) paper demonstrated that in the fall/winter seasons off the east coast both of these processes occur (cooling of sea surface temperatures and increased storm frequencies). Therefore, there is an increase in nutrients at the surface and thus an increase in the phytoplankton biomass at the surface.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES:
• Map of Atlantic Ocean
• Global maps of sea surface temperature and chlorophyll from July 2002 to Oct 2011 from the NASA Earth Observatory (https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/GlobalMaps/view.php?d1=MYD28M&d2=MY1DMM_CHLORA)
• Maps of Pacific Ocean in May and November from the NASA Earth Observatory- Differences from Season to Season (https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Phytoplankton/page4.php)

Phytoplankton Lesson Plans

1. THE GREAT PLANKTON RACE – phytoplankton diversity and sinking adaptations (Marine Activities Resources & Education (MARE), Lawrence Hall of Science, University of California at Berkeley, https://mare.lawrencehallofscience.org/curriculum/teacher-guides/gr5-open-ocean)
2. THE GULF STREAM VOYAGE/BIOLOGY – changes in phytoplankton concentrations over space and time from satellite images (Stevens Institute of Technology, Center for Improved Engineering and Science Education (CIESE) 2004, https://www.k12science.org/curriculum/gulfstream/teacherbiology.shtml)
3. WHAT COLOR IS THE OCEAN: AND WHY DO YOU NEED A SATELLITE TO TELL YOU? – concentrations of phytoplankton and satellite imagery of oceans from space (SeaWiFS, https://oceancolor.gsfc.nasa.gov/SeaWiFS/TEACHERS/sanctuary_3.html and other resources at the SeaWiFS Teacher Resources website: https://oceancolor.gsfc.nasa.gov/SeaWiFS/TEACHERS/)
4. OCEAN PRODUCTIVITY ACTIVITY – variation of phytoplankton in space (University of Rhode Island, https://kids.earth.nasa.gov/seawifs/phyto4.htm)
5. WHEN IS DINNER SERVED? PREDICTING THE SPRING PHYTOPLANKTON BLOOM IN THE GULF OF MAINE– using satellite data to make predictions about phytoplankton in space and time (Earth Exploration Toolbook, https://serc.carleton.edu/eet/phytoplankton/index.html)
6. MEADOWS IN THE SEA – phytoplankton photosynthesis, food webs, phytoplankton diversity (“Whales in the Classroom: Oceanography”, Lawrence Wade, Singing Rock Press, Minnetonka, MN, 2005)
7. UPWELLING: THE UNDERWATER ELEVATOR – geology and geography that results in upwelling/plankton blooms, annual variation in phytoplankton (“Whales in the Classroom: Oceanography”, Lawrence Wade, Singing Rock Press, Minnetonka, MN, 2005)

Science is both a body of knowledge about the world we live in and the processes used to understand that world. The trick is to help students learn both the content and the process, and student-directed scientific investigations can help!

First, scientific investigations involve more than just experiments (manipulating some factor in a system in order to see how that affects the outcome) because for many ideas experiments are impossible, inappropriate, or only part of the picture. Instead scientific investigations are often centered on making observations and comparisons. Therefore, there are many ways that scientific investigations can be incorporated into your classroom.

Tips about Scientific Investigations:

1. Remember there are no set steps or order of activities that define “good science.”
2. The question being investigated should 1) be connected to scientific concepts and methods and 2) provide opportunities for students to connect their knowledge, experience, and interests with the subject.
3. Effective investigations should be organized, structured activities that guide students in using scientific methods to work on meaningful problems.
4. Investigations typically unfold over weeks to months.
5. Use effective questions to subtly guide students toward certain insights and self-reflection about their previous and acquired knowledge throughout the investigation.
6. Try to encourage ideas to flow freely, students to articulate their “first draft thinking” and then revisit the ideas later in their investigation, and students to think critically about their classmates’ ideas.
7. The process of science is iterative, any point in the process leads to many possible next steps (known or unknown), and science lacks tidy endpoints.
8. Investigations generate raw data but those data must be analyzed and interpreted to develop a scientific argument about the investigation/question.

Thinking Like a Scientist:

A key part of a scientific investigation in the classroom is teaching the students how to think and act like scientists. The “Understanding Science: How Science Really Works” website (https://undsci.berkeley.edu/teaching/index.php) created by the University of California – Berkeley has some great suggestions of what it looks like for students to be scientists:
1. Question what they observe. First they should ask general questions, and then limit the arena they explore by defining the problem to develop a question that can drive their investigation.
2. Investigate further. They should research what is currently known about the topic/question.
3. Articulate their expectations of the results. They should be skeptical and try to refute their own ideas of what will happen.
4. Seek out more evidence and make observations. They should choose a way to investigate their question, gather or create the materials, and collect the data.
5. Be open-minded. They should examine the raw data and process/analyze the data and change their mind if the evidence warrants it.
6. Think creatively. They should try to come up with alternate explanations for what they observe and reflect on their findings by thinking about what the results mean.
7. Communicate with others. They should talk with others about their ideas, questions, expectations, methods, raw data, analyzed data, and results (aka at many points during the investigation).

Also, on the “Understanding Science: How Science Really Works” website there are Teaching Resources broken out by grade level (K-2, 3-5, 6-8, 9-12, 13-16). The resources range from tips & strategies to lesson plans to educational research. Check it out and let us know what you think.

Questions for the MARE community:

1. What do scientific investigations look like in your classroom?
2. What are some techniques that you use to help students to act and think like scientists?
3. What helps you direct scientific investigations?
4. What hinders you from directing scientific investigations?
5. What was your favorite scientific investigation you have done with your students?

Let us know what you think…

* This year at Rutgers Ocean Days, we are asking MARE classrooms/clubs to complete a marine or aquatic related science investigation. For more information visit https://coseenow.net/mare/ocean-day/.