In this activity, students watch a video to learn about the work of biologists Steve Palumbi and Megan Morikawa, who study coral reefs.
Students complete a worksheet where they answer questions about the video and practice analyzing ocean temperature data.
Teaching Tips
Positives
All necessary materials are provided allowing for easy implementation.
The video includes actual footage of coral reefs and research divers which will be engaging for students.
Additional Prerequisites
The worksheet is available as a fillable PDF and as a google doc.
All materials are also available in Spanish.
The activity is designed to fill one 50-minute class period.
Differentiation
The website includes a video of a teacher discussing how they use this resource in their class.
Cross-curricular connections could be made with math classes by further discussing how to analyze graphs and the meaning of slope in real-world contexts, which are both touched on in the worksheet.
Students could research and propose their own plan for how to help restore a coral reef.
There is no contradiction in the resource, laboratory work and experiment carried out is appropriately done. This resource is recommended.
Standards
Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)
ESS3: Earth and Human Activity
HS-ESS3-5 Analyze geoscience data and the results from global climate models to make an evidence-based forecast of the current rate of global or regional climate change and associated future impacts to Earth systems.
LS2: Ecosystems: Interactions, Energy, and Dynamics
HS-LS2-6 Evaluate the claims, evidence, and reasoning that the complex interactions in ecosystems maintain relatively consistent numbers and types of organisms in stable conditions, but changing conditions may result in a new ecosystem.
HS-LS2-7 Design, evaluate, and refine a solution for reducing the impacts of human activities on the environment and biodiversity.
LS3: Heredity: Inheritance and Variation of Traits
HS-LS3-2 Make and defend a claim based on evidence that inheritable genetic variations may result from: (1) new genetic combinations through meiosis, (2) viable errors occurring during replication, and/or (3) mutations caused by environmental factors.
Common Core English Language Arts Standards (CCSS.ELA)
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.WHST.9-10.1 Write arguments focused on discipline-specific content.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.WHST.11-12.1 Write arguments focused on discipline-specific content.
World-Readiness Standards for Learning Languages (ACTFL)
Connections: Connect with other disciplines and acquire information and diverse perspectives in order to use the language to function in academic and career-related situations.
3.1 Making Connections: Learners build, reinforce, and expand their knowledge of other disciplines while using the language to develop critical thinking and to solve problems creatively.
