CH. 5 of Explore the Salish Sea
OCEAN TECH
SeaDoc Science Director, Joe Gaydos, takes a closer look at the Oceangate submarine
NOTE: This unit is in draft form. Revisions and additions will be made until this note does not appear. For questions or suggestions, contact:
mdlutz@ucdavis.edu
NGSS Lesson 1
Grade 5
NGSS Lesson 2
Grade 5
NGSS Lesson 3
Grade 5
5-PS2-1
NGSS Lesson 4
Grade 5
The ocean is less explored than the moon, including the Salish Sea. Where it is inconvenient or even impossible for people to go, we can engineer technology to go there for us, like the Mars Rovers, space probes, automatic unmanned vehicles, drones, and, in this unit, remotely operated vehicles, or ROVs. Ocean Tech revisits the engineering process, but this time requiring physical, mechanical, and electrical engineers working together as a team to achieve a student-driven mission.
Chapter 5, Life in the Deep: The Subtidal World, is our first look into the amazing life forms that live their whole lives underwater. Is there access to the subtidal world near your school? If you can get to one (even if it is a pond or a pool), your students’ engineering efforts will find their reward. What mystery or problem will your students explore with their own ROV? Dive in!
Grades 6-8
By downloading this curriculum, I agree to complete the educator surveys and pre- and post-assessments with my students.
OCEAN TECH UNIT PLAN
The unit plan for Ocean Tech comes in four parts. You may download and print each one or follow along on your computer where all links to external websites and documents will be live at your fingertips. Here you will find NGSS, Learning Targets, Success Criteria, what to prep, and a list of materials and online resources you will use in the lessons, activities, games, labs, and engineering that will help students explore the essential question they choose.
A peek into life in the deep
STUDENT JOURNAL
This is your students’ place to wonder, record observations, take notes, diagram, and plan and record scientific investigation or engineering processes. It will scaffold each step of learning, but give the locus of control to the students as they explore. It is also a place to celebrate hard work with well-deserved stamps on the back page.
HOW TO PRINT
In Microsoft Word, click on the Layout menu, scroll down to Pages options, and select Book fold in the drop down menu by Multiple pages. Print in landscape orientation on 8.5 x 14” paper with two staples along the center fold.
SLIDESHOW
Use these PowerPoint slides with video and resource links as an aid to help guide, but not dominate, your learning progression. Feel free to modify content and add or remove slides to best fit your learning goals. Where there are place-based maps, videos, or project examples, replace with similar content, specific to your school’s region or relevant to your students’ lives and interests.
PRE-ASSESSMENT
Gauge pre-existing knowledge and interest with this brief quiz.. When the unit is finished, don’t forget to take the post-assessment. Classroom teachers, use student achievement data gathered from these assessments for a TPEP Cycle of Inquiry.
WONDER
Give your students a visual or sensory experience that provides a chance to wonder at an inaccessible place in the ocean. The unit plan and slideshow supply an unexpected encounter of a denizen of the deep by a NOAA ROV team, but this may be a hands-on outdoor activity, an observational field trip, or an in-classroom presentation, video, or still photo, such as the one to the right, to invoke curiosity about a phenomenon students can’t wait to try to solve.
Diver Laura James at “The Monster” Sept 2019. Footage by Lamont Granquist
ESSENTIAL QUESTION
After the experience in 2. above, it is time to give a Stormwater Student Journal to each student. Let them get acquainted with it then turn to Journal p. 3 and read Explore chapter 2, Why the Salish Sea is Special. Here is a time to write thoughts, ideas, and questions inspired by their reading into their journals. 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.
BACKGROUND RESEARCH
Once you have established an essential question, the information-gathering begins...or continues. Background research will begin with the reading of the book and continue through the games and activities described in the unit plan. In this link you will find a few more resources students may need along the way. Of course, you’ll come back to this step throughout the process, as your questions and claims will require support.
ENGINEER IT!
Imagine, design, build, test, fail, redesign, rebuild, retest…You get the idea. Repeat until there is a working ROV. Retrain students who are afraid to fail until they see that failure is an essential part of success!
DEVELOP A TESTABLE QUESTION
This is when your students take that larger essential question and distill it down into specific, testable question that can be answered using their ROV.
PUT SCIENCE TO WORK
Identify variables, design a procedure, carry out an investigation, analyze data, and see where active discovery leads. To answers? Solutions? More questions to test? Or maybe even back to the drawing board to start all over again. The scientific process is never linear and never ends, but it is always an adventure! Find resources in the Slideshow and Student Journal.
SeaDoc Educator Workshop participants sampling inlet to Metro Parks Tacoma stormwater filtration system to test water quality before and after filtration. Photo by Jess Newley.
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 Learn More button below for three options for Science Communication, with resources to guide you and your students toward making your work public.
POST-ASSESSMENT
At the end of the unit, administer this post-assessment and record the results, then calculate the difference between the pre- and post-assessment scores to measure student growth for the individual and the whole class.