Investigation

ENGAGE: CLASSROOM

(45 mins.)

Present students with the Intertidal Challenge.

Brainstorm a list of plants and animals they have seen on the beach during field trips or other visits to the beach. Tell them the focus question for their beach field trip will be: How do different plants and animals do the things they need to do to survive, grow, and reproduce despite the intertidal challenge?

Show videos (See links in Resources section) so students can observe the external structures of different marine invertebrates and how they function and behaviors of marine invertebrates in response to chemical and tactile clues.

EXPLORE

1.  Revisit the word “function” and discuss what functions happen every day for the animals like the ones they just saw in the videos and for seaweeds.

2.  Write them on the board as sentences, using the sentence starter: “All plants (or animals) . . .” or “All plants (or animals) have to . . . “

3.  If they don’t think of these functions, add these to the list:

All plants have to take in light, air (carbon dioxide), water, and minerals to make their own
food.

All animals move.

All animals sense the world around them in different ways.

All animals have to find food. They eat plants, other animals, or both.

All animals have to protect themselves from getting injured or eaten by other animals.

4.  Unpack what it means to “sense the world.”

5.  Ask students to draw two animals they predict they will see on their field trip and what they might see if they use a magnifying glass to get a closer view at some part or parts of the animal’s bodies that are used for on the functions on the list in an interesting or unique way.

6.  Students draw and write their predictions in their science notebooks. For the close-up view, they may use a Closer and Closer page that has been glued into their notebook.

7.  Students share their thinking, drawing, and writing with each other. This can be done in partners, small groups, or in the large group taking turns. After students have shared with each other, brainstorm about where they will look for the animals they have predicted they will see. Encourage students to explain their thinking by asking questions such s:

Why would you look there?
What do we know about this plant or animal? 
What kinds of structures do you think plants need? 
What structures have you seen on animals at the beach that function in these ways?

EXTENSION: Do the activity How Do Whales Hear? (See Resources section.)

Field Trip Preparation in the Classroom

ENGAGE:

See the activity Using Backpacks in Learning Centers

1.  While you are pulling things out of the harvester backpack, increase the focus on the cultural importance of beach food resources asking:

Why would I need to take this if I’m going to the beach to find some food?
How will I use it? (In other words,) what is its function?

Accept all reasonable answers. After you have emptied this pack, explain that when someone goes to the beach to harvest plants or animals for food, they are a predator like all other animals that eat plants, animals, or both. As a human, you take things, or tools, with you to use in harvesting. Reinforce the idea that some of the plants and animals they will be studying as scientists when they go on their beach field trip are also eaten and some are very important to subsistence users who have depended on these animals for foods for thousands of years. This is also a good lead-in to beach etiquette rule

2.  Ask: What do other predators use to capture their food? Help them come to the conclusion that every animal has some body parts it uses to get its food and has other body parts that are inside its body that digest the food and move the energy from the food through its body so it can survive and grow.When you are taking items out of the biologist backpack, one by one, ask:

Why would I take this to the beach if I’m going as a scientist?
How could I use it? (In other words,) what is its function?
What’s different about these tools compared to the ones I showed you for my subsistence harvest trip?

3.  After you’ve have emptied the pack, ask students what other scientific equipment they would like to take to the beach as tools. Review some of the “scientific tools” that we will have to assist their research. The students likely suggested microscopes, shovels and buckets as tools. Bring them out and share with students why we’ll be using trays vs. buckets for this trip.

4.  Finally, show them items that you will want them to bring on the field trip by unpacking the student backpack. Discuss the expected weather and what they, as human animals, will need to bring as their “external structures” (e.g., rain gear, warm clothes) to “survive” and be comfortable and safe. Make connections to their internal structures (e.g., they’ll be drinking water and eating snacks which will go into their stomach, they’ll be using their brain to remember the names of the plants and animals they see, etc.)

5.  Give them the intertidal zone experiments to glue into their science notebook or hand them out on the field trip if the students will have clipboards.

Describe how long the field trip will be and explain there will be boundaries set for where they may explore and that those will be pointed out when they arrive at the field site. Explain that there will be boundaries set for where they may explore and that those will be pointed out when they arrive at the field site.

Field Trip

EXPLORE

(20-30 mins.)

After you arrive at the field trip site, keep students together to go over safety rules:

• Have a partner
• Stay within boundaries
• Watch where you step
• Be able to see the “gathering area” from wherever you are

Describe the boundaries of the area students should stay within and the signal you will use to bring them back together after 20 minutes. Review the focus question for the exploration time:  What can I observe plants and animals doing (staying wet, feeding, moving, hiding, etc.) and what kind of structures are they using to do it?

Remind them of the sensory experiments they can do with animals to find out what kind of senses different animals have and where they’re located.

Encourage students to use all their experiences and knowledge from the previous investigations and beach field trips to explore the local area and look, share, and identify plants and animals and look closely at their structures and how they do the things they do.

If elders or community partners are in attendance, ask them to share their discoveries with students out loud.

EXPLAIN

(1 hour)

1.  Gather the students together to being a structured exploration. Each student will explore “one small square” of the beach by marking it out with survey tape. Remind them to focus on structures of plants and animals and how they function.

2.  Tell them to take notes in their science notebook with as much detail as possible so they will remember what they observed. If they know the type of plant or animal (green seaweed or snail) inside their square, they should use that and if they know the name of that type of animal, they should write that down (sea lettuce, periwinkle snail). If they don’t know either one, they should create a descriptive name (small, red worm).

3.  After they have completed their drawing of what’s inside the square and taken notes about structures and their functions, Students can come back together to share what they’ve learned in a variety of ways. You could divide them into pairs to share their findings or each student could first share with one other student and then find two more partners with whom to share findings. You could also bring the whole group back together and then have students pair up. Students can also send photos to the teacher from a phone for a compiled Google slideshow later.

4.  Encourage children to discuss the different external structures that students discovered on plants and animals with each other and how they think they function.

5.  Are you able to sort them by function? Did you discover external structures that were new or surprising? If you were able to adopt a structure onto their own body, which would they choose?

6.  The goal is to have students share their thinking and understanding of what they have found. Ask some students with detailed drawings to share their entries as a way to model how to add details, labels, and explanations for local plants and animals.

EXTENSION

If you are able to visit more than one type of habitat during the field trip (e.g. low intertidal and upper intertidal or river bank and river’s edge) students can make their “one small square” observations in both habitats and then compare and contrast what they observed. This is a very important concept when learning animal-habitat associations in coastal marine and freshwater environments.

Back in the Classroom

ELABORATE

(30 mins.)

Guide a debrief session of the field trip.
Ask:
What did we find out?
How can we share this information?
How did we gather information?
What kind of ways can we use this information to inform others?
What else could be done with this information?
How will we continue to learn about the local aquatic plants and animals in our area?

Assign each student one animal or seaweed that the class observed on their field trip or let them choose one. Their task is to find out about the digestive and nervous systems of animals and the function of internal structures in seaweeds. They will make models of their plant or animal, labeling the different internal and external parts. Give students choices for the media they want to use to create their models.

Drawing: Students can use colored pencils to draw and label external views of the animal from observations in their science notebook or from a digital photo and an internal view from a diagram in a reference book or online image.

Digital model: Students can use a photo of one of the plants or animals from their field photos to create an external anatomy poster. They will also need to find a diagram online that shows the internal anatomy of the digestive and nervous systems, add a title and labels for structures and their functions on slides in a Google Slide show.

Clay model: Students can use modeling clay to create a plant or animal of their choice with post-it tabs added to label the structures and their function. They will need to create a model of the digestive and nervous systems or make a drawing with labels.

Using their animal models, students will then make a class presentation that argues from evidence they either recorded on their field trip or found during their research that specific parts of their animal function differently or the same as structures with a similar function in humans. They will develop arguments for:

1. one internal structure (e.g, stomach, nerves, brain)
2. one external structure (e.g., arm, leg, head), and
3. one sensory structure (e.g., light-sensing structure, a structure that can detect odors.

Using their seaweed models, students will make a class presentation that argues from evidence they either recorded on their field trip or found during their research that specific parts of the seaweed function differently or the same as structures with a similar function in green (land) plants.