| Class Time Required | 4 - 5 class periods |
| Materials Needed |
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| Teacher Preparation |
60 minutes to read, view web sites, copy and prepare materials |
| Prior Student Knowledge |
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| Vocabulary | Algae, Baleen, Blubber, Consumer, Copepod, Decompose, Ecosystem, Food Chain, Holdfast, Intertidal , Invertebrates, Kelp, Microbe, Organism, Pelt, Phytoplankton, Predator, Producer, Recolonize, Scavenger, Subtidal, Tally, Transient, Underfur, Urchin, Zooplankton |
| Science GLEs Addressed |
3rd grade: SA3.1, SC3.1, SC3.2 4th grade: SC2.2, SC3.1, SC3.2 5th grade: SA3.1, SC3.1, SC3.2 |
| Other GLEs Addressed |
Overview: In this 4-5 day investigation, students begin by reading a mystery story about sea otters in the Aleutian Islands, and examining an accompanying population graph. They identify information that they will need to help them solve the missing sea otter mystery, and explore ecological relationships in the sea otter environment using Web sites, video clips, and readings. Information is shared with the class and/or summarized on clue cards, and students then create murals showing the sea otter/kelp bed ecosystem.
Overview: In this 3-4 day investigation, students revisit the sea otter mystery story and discuss what scientists did to study sea otters in the Aleutians. They simulate the observation, identification, sampling, and counting methods used by scientists in two different activities, then reflect, discuss, and pose questions about scientific data collection.
Overview: Overview: In this 7-9 day investigation, students are engaged in a variety of hands-on demonstrations and experiments that will help them to understand thermohaline circulation in the ocean. They begin with an introductory activity that helps them to review or arrive at a definition of density, then go on to demonstrate the effects of temperature and salinity on density and design their own experiment to simulate ocean mixing. They experiment further with hot and cold water as they consider the effects of tropical and polar climates on ocean currents, and end by writing conclusions to summarize their learning.
Overview: In this 4-5 day investigation, students examine hypotheses and evidence related to the causes of the sea otter decline. They narrow down the hypotheses to one, then play a food web game to help them better understand relationships in the kelp bed ecosystem, and predict the outcome of an experiment to test the killer whale predation hypothesis. They put together some of the big ideas about interactions in ecosystems to come up with plausible explanations for the sea otter mystery. Finally, they evaluate whether the hypothesis has been proven. They reflect on their learning by diagramming the sea otter’s food web and predicting what might happen if parts of the ecosystem changed.
Overview: In this 4-5 day investigation, students prepare for fieldwork and then go into the field to practice and apply some of the skills and knowledge that they developed while solving the sea otter mystery. Depending on local opportunities, the field trip may take the form of an ecosystem mapping exercise, a river or stream walk, or a coast walk survey. Students return to the classroom to analyze and share their data after the field trip.
