
Educators' Corner
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.
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
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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.
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Who Moved the Beach?
NOAA Ocean Service Education
Coastal erosion is a natural process that sweeps large sections of land out to sea. Students will learn about how this process occurs and then explain how human activity can increase erosion risk. They will then determine how to reduce these risks, understanding both the advantages and disadvantages of various options. Students will also look a beach elevation data and make predictions on how vulnerable they are to erosion.
Plot Your Course
NOAA Ocean Service Education
Charting your course on the high seas is a skill required of all seafarers since the beginning of ocean exploration. In this lesson, students will use nautical charts to determine the distance between locations. They will also identify obstacles and features that can aid in navigation.
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).
Benthic Communities of the Arctic Ocean
NOAA
In this activity, students will be able to identify major taxa that are dominant in deep benthic communities of the Arctic Ocean. Given distribution data for major taxa in different Arctic benthic communities, students will be able to identify patterns in the distribution of these taxa and infer plausible reasons for these patterns.
Introduction to Latitude and Longitude
National Geographic Xpeditions
This lesson introduces students to latitude and longitude. They will look at lines of latitude and longitude on a United States map and discuss the reasons why these lines are helpful. Students will also discuss the ways that temperatures vary with latitude and will explain the clothes they might wear at specific latitudes.
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.
Self Contained Gulf Oil Spill Kit
The Ocean and You
A kit you can create to help your students understand the impacts of the Gulf Of Mexico oil spill. Easily contained in a box so clean up is easy...as compared to oil spills in real life!
Understanding Sea Level Using Real Data
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Students will use graphical data to understand changing sea levels and how they will impact people around the globe.
Secrets of the Sediments
Deep Earth Academy/ Consortium for Ocean Leadership
In this activity, students graph and analyze data from sediments collected off the coast of Santa Barbara, California to determine whether this information can be used to study historical climate change.
Off Base
NOAA Ocean Explorer
Students define terms pH and buffer. Students explain in general terms the carbonate buffer system of seawater. Students explain Le Chatelier’s Principle and predict how the carbonate buffer system of seawater will respond to a change in concentration of hydrogen ions.