Investigation

ENGAGE

(1-2 hrs.)

1.  Ask students: Why do you think some organisms survive well in a certain place?
What do you think would happen if they were moved to a different type of habitat?Show photos of a couple of different animals to spark student thinking and provide a formative assessment of previous knowledge as students craft their explanations during science discussions or from a written explanation assignment.

2.  Show the first-half or the entire video Adaptation (The first half of video, approximately 7 minutes, introduces the concept of adaptation and distinguishes between structural and behavioral adaptations with Alaskan examples. The second half is a series of mini-talks about the adaptations of opossums, beavers, and sea turtles.)

3.  Provide students with nonfiction books and other media or library time to give students opportunities to observe and identify features and behaviors that help organisms live in their environments. (See Resources section.)

4.  Create a class chart of features and behaviors in specific habitats based on evidence from the video and other resources.

5.  Intertidal Environment Demonstration: Draw a quick sketch of an intertidal profile on the board, from splash zone to lower intertidal zone and review the fact that different zones are exposed at different tides. You may also want to spend a bit of time explaining how tides work and/or reviewing a tide book. 

6.  Choose five students of the greatest height range possible within the group and line them up in front of the class from tallest to shortest. Describe what the intertidal zone is and what it means. 

a. Start with the tallest student as the splash zone. Describe that the splash zone receives very little salt water and only at the highest tides. Give the tallest student a light misting with the spray bottle. Ask the student if they can tell you what organisms they might expect to find in the splash zone. Write or draw those organisms on the board in the splash zone.

b.  Move on to the high tide zone. Give that student two sprays and explain that the high tide zone is exposed to air for longer periods of time than it is covered in water. Ask students to tell you what might be found here. Describe that animals here need adaptations for dealing with desiccation (e.g. hard shells). Review splash zone and high tide zone by giving more sprays to the students.

c.  Move to mid tide zone. Describe how the mid-tide zone is under water half of the time, exposed to air half the time. Give student some sprays. Ask what might be found here and why (animals with somewhat softer bodies). Review all zones, and spray as you go. 

d.  Move to the low-tide zone and describe. Ask if animals in the high tide zone could also live in the low tide zone. Explain that they would be quickly consumed by the numerous predators that can only live in the low tide zone. Review all zones. 

e.  The shortest student represents the sub-tidal zone, so move to the last student. Dramatically unscrew the cap of the bottle as if you are going to dump the whole thing on the student. Describe the sub-tidal zone and ask what lives here. Conclude by stating the sub-tidal zone is always ‘under water’ as you hold the un-lidded bottle over the final student's head.

       (Adapted from Intertidal Environment Demonstration, Center for Alaska Coastal Studies CoastWatch Curriculum)

7.  Work with students to create a Biodiversity Checklist for the seaweeds and animals they can expect to see on their beach field trip. Discuss the differences in the four intertidal zones (splash zone, upper, middle, lower) and the tide pool that might affect the survival of plants and animals. Ask for some predictions of animals that they think would survive well, less well, and might not survive at all in each of the five habitats. Ask them to explain their reasoning in terms of features and behaviors of each animal.

EXPLORE

(1-2 hours)

1.  Write each of the organisms on the Biodiversity Checklist you just compiled with the class on slips of paper and place them into a container. Divide the class into four teams (five if the beach field trip site will have both rocky areas in the lower intertidal zone and tide pools). Assign each team one of the tidal zones or habitats they will be visiting on their field trip and then have them draw four or five organisms from the container. (If you have more students than organisms on the list, add some that you know they are likely to observe on their beach field trip. You can also assign some groups the same organisms. Be sure to include seaweeds as well as animals.

2.  Model how to read a nonfiction book and look for clues in the illustrations (for example, One Small Square: Seashore) to gather evidence about adaptations to local beach habitats that help a type of seaweed or animal survive well in a particular zone or a tide pool.

3.  Each student will do research to become the class expert on their animal, and after they complete their research, they will teach their classmates about the animal. Remind students that scientists learn by reading, writing, and researching about information that is interesting and useful to them. Ask each student to write the following questions in their science notebooks as a guide to their research:

       Name of animal: 

• What does it eat?
• How does it move?
• How does it get food?
• How does it protect itself?
• Something it does that few other animals can do.
• Use five words to describe it.
• Tell if and how it is used by people in your community.

Field Trip Preparation: (20-30 mins.)

Re-visit the discussion about what might happen to an animal that is moved to another habitat than one it lives in now which for beach animals can be a very short distance or happen when a rock is turned over.

Review beach etiquette guidelines or guide students into constructing their own rules.

EXPLAIN

(30 mins.)

1.  After all the team members have completed their research on their four or five species, have them work together as a team to answer two focus questions in their group:
Which of these species are likely to survive well and which are likely to survive less well?
Are there any species that wouldn’t be able to survive in our zone?
What features and behaviors of our organism support your answer?

2.  Each team member will construct an argument based on evidence in the form of an opinion piece, with references, that supports their answer to these questions for one of the species. They will then make their argument to the other team members. After reading the opinion pieces of the other team members, each student will fill out an assessment. The goal is to help each other develop solid arguments with strong supporting evidence. Students will have another opportunity to collect evidence on your beach field trip.

3.  Create a Biodiversity Checklist form and make copies for each team to use on the field trip. Make copies of the Quadrat Datasheet for each team.

Field Trip (2 hours)

EXPLORE

(20-30 mins.)

When you arrive at the beach field trip, review the focus question for their exploration time: What features and behaviors might contribute to the survival of different organisms in each of the intertidal zones and in tide pools?

Provide each team with the Biodiversity Checklist (on a clipboard or piece of cardboard with a rubber band), a pencil, a quadrat, and a Quadrat Datasheet. Discuss how to make an estimate of the number of organisms in an area by sampling a smaller area and counting all of the organisms within the quadrat. Demonstrate how to take a random sample by tossing the quadrat back over your shoulder without looking.

EXPLAIN (Focused Investigation)

1.  The teams will survey the beach zones/habitats beginning with the one they were assigned. They will look for their three animals and one plant in their assigned zone/habitat and also look for additional evidence to strengthen their arguments. If they see more than five of one of their assigned organisms within their zone, they will do a quadrat count three times within that zone and enter data in the Quadrat Datasheet. While exploring their zone/habitat, they will also check all the species they observe on the biodiversity checklist.

2.  After they finish quadrat counts, they will then explore other beach zones/habitats, checking off all of the species they observe in each habitat on their Biodiversity Checklist and looking for additional evidence about whether or not their organisms could survive in each of the other habitats. If they see more than five of one of their assigned organisms within one of the other zones, they will do three quadrat counts there too.

3.  Bring the class back together to share their findings. Did they find their plants and animals where they predicted when they argued from evidence? What did they notice about how well plants and animals were surviving in the places they found them? Did they see some characteristics or behaviors they hadn’t thought of that might help the organisms survive in a particular habitat?

Please note: Depending on the tidal cycle, you may have to modify these directions so students will all be able to survey the lowest zone available.

Back in the Classroom

ELABORATE

Back in the classroom, the students construct a scale bar graph together that shows the relationship of the number of animals of each species they observed and counted in each zone or habitat. Ask whether the evidence they collected would support an argument about the adaptations of each of their organisms to the zones where they found them.

EXTENSION

Extend learning to other biomes. Visit the Biomes of the World website. Have students compare the plants and animals featured in each biome with those they have documented in their own journals.

Ask students:

- Is what you see the same as what other kids would find in their backyards?

- Which biome has environmental conditions that are most like the place where you live?

- Which biome has environmental conditions that are the most different from where you live?
Have students find an unusual plant or animal that lives in this biome. What’s unusual about this plant or animal? Why might it look the way it does?

Students could work in teams to create an imaginary animal that has a special feature that enables them to survive in a biome with harsh conditions such as the desert or tundra.

EXTENSION

(30 – 50 mins.)

High Tide, Low Tide Game

Exploration (10 minutes): Tell your students: We are going to play a game called “High-tide, Low-tide.” I’ll say the name of an animal that lives near the tide line. It will be an animal that spends some of its life exposed at low-tide and some of its life covered with water, at high-tide. To begin with I’ll describe how the animal moves and feeds at high tide. Then I’ll describe how the animal protects itself and behaves at low tide.

Here’s an example: A Barnacle.
You are a barnacle. You have glued your shell to a rock and you sit upside down in your shell house. Each shell house is made of six hard, crusty, plates. When the tide is high the barnacle opens its movable shell plates and throws out its curled, feathery legs. It uses its curled feathery legs to sweep the sea soup for tiny plants and tiny animals and kick them down into their mouths. At low tide, the barnacles show no movement or sign of life. The six hard, crusty shell plates close up tight. The barnacle’s shell makes a moist house and keeps the animal cool. The barnacle sits upside-down in its cool shell house with its head cemented to the bottom and its long feathery legs curled up tight.

When I say: “high tide,” show me how a barnacle behaves at high tide. When I say: “low tide,” show what a barnacle does when the tide is low.

Here’s another example: A Limpet. At high tide, the limpet moves about scraping and scraping the rocks with its tongue. A limpet tongue is like a long ribbon covered with very fine teeth. The limpet creeps along scraping and eating on the thin layer of tiny green plants that covers the rocks. At low tide, a limpet out of seawater does not scrape the rocks for tiny green plants. It pulls its head and the two long feelers inside its cone-shaped shell house. With its wide muscular foot, it plasters itself to the rock with very tight suction. The limpet’s cone-shaped shell protects it from hungry crab, sea stars and shorebirds and it makes a moist pocket for the animal inside its shell.

When I say: “high tide,” show me how a limpet behaves at high tide. When I say: “low tide,” show what a limpet does when the tide is low.

Explanation (10-20 minutes): After students have acted out the examples, ask them to think about the marine animals and plants that they’ve learned about. What would they be doing at high tide and low tide? What are their unique ways of eating and moving?

Art Project Extension: Create a Creature Sculpture

Model the creation of the sculpture.

Use large paper and a picture to support observational drawing.

One step at a time, show students how to:

1. Draw the form of the animal.
2. Cut out the animal on the lines.
3. Staple paper so there are two sides together, with just a couple of staples.
4. Paint or use markers to draw details (eyes, gills, fins, wings, etc.).
5. Staple carefully all around, leaving one gap to stuff the creature.
6. Stuff by putting newsprint into the gap, then staple it closed.

Have students spread out in the room, or have students work in teams to create one sculpture per small group at a time. Students will use the information from their marine/aquatic animal research to create the sculpture. Encourage children to talk about the specific characteristics of their animal; the number of legs, the shape of the body, use of appendages, etc. The plan that students make is important since this will be the information that is used to inform guests and others of research.

Students will present the finished sculpture to the class or in small groups. Discuss how the sculptures are similar to the real animal or plant, and how they are different. What new details did students learn about their animal or plant as they made their sculptures?

Hang the sculptures with fishing line, make them into mobiles, or just use them to display the forms of creatures for others to see. Students will explain their research and visual details of their creature to guests, family members and others.