Our Ocean Portal Educators’ Corner provides you with activities, lessons and educational resources to bring the ocean to life for your students. We have collected top resources from our collaborators to provide you with teacher-tested, ocean science materials for your classroom. We hope these resources, along with the rich experience of the Ocean Portal, will help you inspire the next generation of ocean stewards.
Featured Lesson Plans
Keeping Watch on Coral Reefs
Students learn why coral reefs are important, and what can be done to protect them from major threats.
Long Live the Sharks and Rays
Students will learn about adaptations that have helped sharks and rays survive. Students will explore similarities and differences between sharks, rays and other fish and that different types of sharks and rays have different temperaments and diets and that some of the largest sharks and rays are the most gentle.
Focus on Farmer Fish
In this two part lesson, students gain a deeper understanding of the relationship between environmental factors and organism adaptations through a focused study on a specific coral reef denizen—the personable farmerfish. Students first take part in an interactive PowerPoint presentation to gain background knowledge and then apply learned concepts by participating in a board game.
Search Lesson Plans
Find lessons/activities by topic, title or grade levels. Sort by newest or alphabetically. Lessons were developed by ocean science and education organizations like NOAA, COSEE, and NMEA to help you bring the ocean to your classroom.
Deep Dive into Ocean Portal Website
National Museum of Natural History
Join Ocean Portal Editor-in-Chief Emily Frost and museum educators from the National Museum of Natural History as they guide you through the Ocean Portal website, exploring a multitude of digital assets including vetted scientific information, interactive content, and education resources.
Gulf of Mexico Curriculum: Deep Sea to Coast Connectivity
DEEP-C
Keeping Watch on Coral Reefs
NOAA Ocean Service
Students learn why coral reefs are important, and what can be done to protect them from major threats.
Light at the Bottom of the Deep Dark Ocean
NOAA Ocean Explorer
Students will be able to list the various adaptations that enable deep-sea fishes to survive; explain how bioluminescence helps deep-sea fish respond to food predator and reproductive pressures in their environments; explore how the structure of an appendage helps determine and utilize its function; describe how deepwater organisms respond to their dark environment.
Net Results
WETA/PBS Marine Fisheries and Aquaculture Series
Students will study and replicate a model of the factors affecting fisheries populations in the Chesapeake Bay (or any other bay). Through a game they will investigate how decisions by watermen, recreational fisherpeople, and lawmakers influence and are influenced by economics and the abundance or scarcity of fish and shellfish stocks.
Ocean Primary Production
NOAA Ocean Explorer
This group of lesson plans focuses on primary production in the ocean via photosynthesizers, like plankton and algae. Students will learn what factors limit primary productivity in the ocean and about other ways ocean organisms produce energy (i.e. chemosynthesis).
Oyster Disease
Virginia Sea Grant
Along the East Coast of the United States, two diseases can cause significant damage to growing oysters and in some cases even kill them. In this lesson plan, students will use data to determine whether water temperature, oyster size, or time of planting determines whether a young oyster becomes ill with disease.
Prince William's Oily Mess - A Tale of Recovery
NOAA Ocean Service Education
How does an ecosystem recover from a major one-time insult such as an oil spill? As you will learn from this Discovery Story, the answer is not simple. It isn't easy to determine whether a particular area of shoreline has recovered from oil during a spill, or how to expect it to look when it has.
The Moon Made Me Do It!
NOAA Ocean Service Education
Much like rising and setting sun has an impact on life on Earth, the cycle of the moon can change plant and animals behavior. In this lesson plan, students will discuss how the lunar cycle affects living organisms and how this might occur. They will also design experiments that could figure out whether the lunar cycle affects a specific behavior.
Tracking the Invasive Veined Rapa Whelk
Virginia Institute of Marine Science
The veined rapa whelk is an invader in Chesapeake waters. These predatory snails eat ecologically and economically important shellfish that are native to the bay. In this lesson, students will learn about invasive species and predict where the invasive rapa whelk will live within the bay. A discussion of invasive species impacts on native ecosystems will follow.