What this unit is about…
Did you know that a elephant seal can hold its breath for 77 minutes and dive 5,000 feet (1524 meters) into the sea? We are still working on the science to discover just what enables these remarkable feats under intense pressure, cold, and dark. Diving birds and mammals utilize physical, behavioral, and physiological adaptations to withstand the extreme conditions of diving and still return to the surface with oxygen reserves (and a meal!). Your students can join us in investigating just how they do this.
This unit will review the concepts of pressure-changing with depth, marine food webs, structure and function, photosynthesis and respiration, and of course, the process of science. It will introduce metabolism, the diving reflex, sensory structures for detecting prey, wave properties of acoustics, trophic pyramids, and bioaccumulation of toxins in long-lived predators. Oh yeah, and there will be orca forensics!
Next Generation Science Standards in this unit:
4-PS4-1 Model sound waves and describe their power to vibrate a membrane.
4-LS1-1 Structures and functions that aid diving birds and mammals.
4-LS1-2 Use a model to describe that animals receive different types of information through their senses, process the information in their brain, and respond to the information in different ways.
5-ESS3-1 Obtain and combine information about ways individual communities use science ideas to protect Earth’s resources and environment.
MS-PS1-4 Develop a model that predicts and describes changes in particle motion, temperature, and state of a pure substance when thermal energy is added or removed.
MS-LS2-4 Construct an argument supported by empirical evidence that changes to physical or biological components of an ecosystem affect populations.
Photo courtesy of Brandon Cole
Photo courtesy of Brandon Cole
The Sequence
After you have registered for the curriculum, preparing the unit is as easy as 1, 2, 3!
Review the unit plan, and customize it to suit your needs
This unit plan is flexible, adaptable, and in Word format to ensure that your experience can be tailored geographically to your local watershed and community, and to your particular teaching objectives and needs. Use the plan like a map- it has directions, resources, learning targets and performance expectations, and more to guide every step of the way, but the adventure you and your students share is your own.
Review and customize the slideshow
This slideshow presents helpful background information, including links to online resources and videos. With helpful presenter notes, it also acts as a guide as you progress. As with the unit plan, you may want to customize certain slides to make them even more relevant and local. For this reason, it is in PowerPoint. Save a copy and make the change you see fit.
Review, customize, and print the accompanying student journal
This editable Word document is your students’ place to wonder, record observations, take notes, diagram, and plan and record scientific investigation or engineering processes. It is also a place to celebrate hard work with well-deserved stamps on the back page. Review and customize the journal to reflect the changes you’ve made in your unit plan and slideshow.
HOW TO PRINT
In Microsoft Word, click on the Layout menu, then the arrow to expand the Page Set Up options. Click Margins and select “Book Fold” in the drop down menu by Multiple pages. Print in landscape orientation on 8.5 x 14” (legal) paper with two staples along the center fold. Note: the font is Helvetica. Changing the font can change alignment of journal pages.
Utilize the materials below for additional student resources throughout the unit.
Additional Resources & Materials
Assessments
Every unit has its own pre- and post-assessments for tracking the progress and growth that students make throughout the curriculum. Links to these (and additional formative assessments!) are also provided in the unit plan.
DIVE! POST-ASSESSMENT
DIVE! PRE-ASSESSMENT
WONDER
Give your students a visual or sensory experience that provides a chance to wonder at the ability of humans to act like marine mammals. This may be a hands-on outdoor activity, an observational field trip, an in-classroom presentation, a still photo, or a video (like the one in the link below) to invoke curiosity about a phenomenon students can’t wait to try to solve.
Essential question
After the experience of “wonder” from the video above, it is time to give the Dive! Student Journal to each student. Here is a time to write thoughts, ideas, and questions into their journals inspired by their reading of Explore the Salish Sea Chapter 6, Life Between Two Worlds: Diving Birds and Mammals. After students have read and written, invite an open discussion with the class. Develop an essential question around the mystery or problem they’d like to solve. Guide this one to be about adaptations for diving.
Background research
Once you have established an essential question, the information-gathering begins...or continues! The Explore the Salish Sea book is a great place to start, there are some additional resources in the link below, and you may find many more of your own. Of course, you’ll come back to this step throughout the process, as your questions and claims will require support.
Develop a Testable Question
This is when your students take that larger essential question and distill it down into specific, testable question. The most direct questions begin with, “Is, Are, Do, Does, or Will…”
put science to work
Identify variables, design a procedure, carry out an investigation, analyze data, and see where active discovery leads. Will there be answers? Solutions? More questions to test? It may even be back to the drawing board to start all over again. The scientific process is never linear (and it never ends), but there is always an adventure! The resources in The Real Process of Science website explain the whole deal, and the How Science Works interactive diagram is a tool your students can use to track their own process. Pretty slick!
In this unit, there are two opportunities for scientific investigations, one in Lesson 1 with the dive reflex and one in Lesson 3 with orca forensics.
communicate your findings
This is a crucial part of the scientific process! It is the part where the results of all your hard work can make a difference. This may be a difference in the choices a few citizens make each day to help the sea or a new bill on the Senate floor that changes the way our whole state helps the whales. Click on the button above to return to the Real Process of Science website’s online tool for students to build the story of their scientific process.
Photo courtesy of Brandon Cole
Click the button below to go to the Box folder of all the documents for this unit in one place.
Ideas for improvement? Share ideas and resources with our Education Coordinator, Mira, at mdlutz@ucdavis.edu.