Learners explore the various steps of the water cycle. They identify the three steps in the water cycle and how they are related. Students describe three ways to conserve water. Learners explore the origin of the water source that...

Our oceans are composed of many complex relationships. Young oceanographers explore relationships between organisms, understand the world ocean's currents, and discover the effects of water pollution and how it behaves. There are...

In the second lesson of a five-part series, young climatologists use provided temperature and precipitation data to create climographs of three different cities. They then analyze these climographs to develop a general understanding...

How much does the sun heat up a lake or ocean? Scholars use a cup and a strong lamp to investigate the heat transfer and thermal layers in the ocean to come up with the answer. They collect data and graph it in order to better understand...

Be shore to use this drifter resource. The third installment of a five-part series has learners using the NOAA's Adopt-a-Drifter website to track to movement of a drifter (buoy) in the ocean. Graphing the collected data on a map allows...

Follow the path to the sea floor. Pupils play an online interactive board game to reach the bottom of the sea. Participants must match descriptions of creatures to a property of water dealing with oxygen, food, light, or density to move...

Examine how pollution makes its way into an ocean with help from a model watershed. Scholars use household items to recreate a mini-watershed, equipped with pollutants, that when mixed with rain drain into a model's body of...

Let's get moving! The second installment of a 2-part series of six adventures helps learners take part in individual explorations by sea and by land. After navigating the waters in an informative WebQuest, groups create and hide their...

Oceans represent more than 80 percent of all habitats, yet we know less about them than most other habitats on the planet. The instructor introduces the epipelagic, mesopelagic, bathypelagic, twilight, and midnight zones in the ocean....

What happens when ice melts? Well ... water happens. When that melting ice is a glacier, the amount of water that results produces change throughout the world. Middle school science sleuths uncover the truth about global...

Bring the ocean floor to life! Earth science scholars discover the process of deep sea mapping in the third installment in a series of five lessons about ocean exploration. The teacher's guide includes helpful resources, worksheets, and...

Take a deep dive into oceanography. The online interactive allows for learners to board a submersible to dive to the bottom of the ocean to investigate sea vents. On the way down, individuals see different marine life at different...

It's time to boldly go where your class has not gone before! The introductory lesson in a five-part series takes young oceanographers aboard the NOAA Ship Okeanos to begin a study of ocean exploration. The lesson includes a comparison of...

Wait til your class gets their hands on this! Aspiring engineers design a working robotic arm in the fifth and final installment in a series of ocean exploration lessons. Pupils learn about the use of underwater robots in ocean...

How is sea coral like a thermometer? Part three of a six-part series from NOAA describes how oceanographers can use coral growth to estimate water temperature over time. Life science pupils manipulate data to determine the age of corals...

Assign groups of middle school oceanographers to research one of the following underwater robots; ABE, Herculues, ROPOS, RCV-150, Tiburon, or general purpose ROVs. An included handout guides them through information to be gathered. Each...

How do oceanographers make maps under water? Junior explorers discover the technologies and processes involved in creating bathymetric maps in part three of a five-part series designed for fifth- and sixth-grade pupils. The lesson...

Explore ocean habitats with a lesson that showcases the home of manatees and loggerhead turtles in Belize. Here, pupils compare and contrast the homes of ocean animals to those of humans, listen to an original short story about...

There are underwater rivers that flow on the ocean floor thanks to a difference in density. Scholars learn about the density in both liquids and solids in the second lesson of an 11-part series. They then determine the density of water,...

Explore the importance of a concentration gradient in the rates of dissolution. Using the ocean ecosystem, learners study rates of dissolution around coral reefs. A hands-on experiment helps individuals discover the effects of changing a...

Educate scholars on pollution—air, water, and land—with a series of lessons that begin with a thorough explanation of each type. Learners then take part in three activities to reinforce the importance of reducing pollution. They...

Don't just sink the boat. Using a closed container as a submarine, pupils experiment to see what to add to the container to make it float, sink to the bottom, and hover in the middle. After finding one option, learners see if they can...

A pool of brine in the deep sea can be up to four times as salty as the surrounding sea water. The deep sea ecosystem relies on chemosynthesis and the organisms that live there are often strange to us. The lesson focuses on researching...

Fifth graders identify function of phytoplankton in the biospere by conducting experiments and simulations and reading for information. They detect the presence of phytoplankton in bodies of water by examining ocean in satellite images...