Ocean Species at Risk Unit (9-12)
Lesson Plans
Grades9, 10, 11, 12Biology, Earth and Space Sciences
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Provided by Ocean Wise
What it is
- This five-lesson unit plan about the connection between human activities and impacts on aquatic animals focuses on climate change, pollution, bycatch, plastics, and habitat loss.
- Uniting Indigenous knowledge and conventional science practices, students will learn about keystone species, the impacts of whale populations on Indigenous culture, economic implications, and much more.
- Many of the included resources are based on information from British Columbia in Canada, but this resource is informative and relevant for students from other places, as well.
Teaching tips
Positives
- This unit includes a variety of hands-on activities that will keep students engaged, foster critical thinking skills, and allow students to tap into their creativity.
- The Thoughtbook portion of each lesson gives students space for reflection to process the new content and how it fits into a broader context.
Prerequisites
- Students should understand the greenhouse effect, climate change, and carbon sinks.
- Students should know some ways pollutants enter waterways.
- The link to iNaturalist's Getting Started page is broken. Users can find it here.
- The video, 30 Days Without Single-Use Plastics, does have one instance of a bleeped-out curse word.
- The link for the data card in Lesson 4 takes users to the shoreline clean-up page. The data card is in the Student Workbook.
Differentiation & Implementation
- Many students, especially English language learners, may benefit from studying the glossary terms prior to completing the unit.
- After learning about environmental law, civics students can discuss the process of policy-making and other examples of the tragedy of the commons.
- When exploring webpages, some students may benefit from guiding questions to answer or a checklist of features to look for.
- Before writing their scientific briefings, some students may benefit from reading mentor texts.
From the scientist review
This resource allows students to learn about the Earth's ocean system, it's resources, and how they are interconnected. The references and sourced material utilized for this resources are from credible sources. We recommend this resource for teaching.
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