
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. 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.
Grade Level
Lesson Subject
Paper Plate Fish Lesson
Moorea Coral Reef LTER Education
This activity is a fun, basic craft, but can be adapted to incorporate structure and function lessons in a classroom setting. Students will build their own fish from a paper plate, decorate it, and learn about the function of each of their fish’s fins in the process.
Mutualism and Coral Reefs
Moorea Coral Reef LTER Education
This lesson is created to stress the idea of interrelationships among organisms and how this can effect the surrounding environment. This lesson also goes step by step through the scientific approach to developing and implementing a scientific research study. Students are expected to write their own ideas about the best way to investigate the scientific questions provided, and compare their ideas to those of the actual researcher.
Coral Reef Relationships
Moorea Coral Reef LTER Education
This lesson introduces the idea of interrelationships among organisms and how these could help them persist in a coral reef ecosystem. Students will learn about symbiotic relationships, with mutualism among coral and zooxanthellae as the model organisms in the first lesson and then moving on to parasitism and mutualism. Topics include the transfer of energy and matter through the processes of photosynthesis and respiration. These concepts are approached through the marine environment, rather than the terrestrial environment, which allows most students to take a step out of their comfort zone. Teaching these concepts with examples from the coral reef ecosystem is also a great way to incorporate ocean literacy into the classroom.
This lesson works well as an introduction or review of these processes. Please implement additional classroom activities that will complement the concepts discussed in this unit. This unit was written primarily for seventh graders, but adjustments can be made to fit any grade level.
Coral Adaptations
Moorea Coral Reef LTER Education
In this two-part lesson, students will compare and contrast the adaptive strategies of branching coral and mounding coral through participation in an interactive PowerPoint and a hands-on lab activity. Students complete a note-taking guide during the PowerPoint that provides background information to be used during the lab. In the lab activity, teams of 4 students construct different corals out of paper and test the design stability against physical disturbance.
Focus on Farmer Fish
Moorea Coral Reef LTER Education
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.
What is a Coral Reef? Middle School
Moorea Coral Reef LTER Education
Students will gain an understanding of the basic components of a coral reef ecosystem, with emphasis on specific abiotic and biotic factors crucial to reef health and trophic level relationships among key organisms. Also included in the lesson is an opportunity for students to learn about traditional, Polynesian culture and the native uses of coral reef resources. This is accomplished through a PowerPoint presentation with corresponding student note-taking guide and several short critical thinking group work opportunities throughout the lesson.
Food Chain Hide and Seek
Moorea Coral Reef LTER Education
Students will play a game in order to learn about predator-prey relationships, a simple food chain, and the coral reef ecosystem. Students will act the parts of various reef fishes, to explore the relationship between predators and their prey. When the lights are on, damselfish emerge from hiding in the reef to forage for food. At night, however, individual damselfish race against one another to find shelter in the reef. Damselfish that do not successfully find refuge at night may be eaten by nocturnally feeding squirrelfish. Squirrelfish do not come out to eat during the day for fear of being eaten by their predators, large emperors. These predator-prey relationships are altered as the coral reef habitat is damaged by pollution throughout the game. A follow-up PowerPoint is available on the MCR LTER education website to emphasize the concepts introduced in this lesson in a more formal format. Download the supplementary PowerPoint.
Jelly Critters: Gelatinous zooplankton
NOAA
In this activity, students will be able to compare and contrast at least three different groups of organisms that are included in ‘gelatinous zooplankton’, describe how gelatinous zooplankton fit into marine food webs, and explain how inadequate information about an organism may lead to that organism being perceived as insignificant.
Be a Scientist
Monterey Bay Aquarium
Learn how scientists collect field data by being a scientist yourself! By studying a specific ecosystem, students learn how different scientists work together, what kinds of data scientists record, and experience the scientific process through observation and data collection.
Is Climate Change Good For Us?
Wild BC
In this activity students are encouraged to consider how climate change could impact them personally and how changes may affect their regions. Students will analyze the roles of organisms as part of interconnected food webs, populations, communities, and ecosystems, assess survival needs and interactions between organisms and the environment, assess the requirements for sustaining healthy local ecosystems evaluate human impacts on local ecosystems.