The Arctic Ocean Curriculum Unit was created by the Arctic Research Consortium of the United States with funding from the North Pacific Research Board. This project aimed to update and revise existing Arctic Ocean-related lesson plans originally created by PolarTREC program teacher alumni. The format used lends itself to the changes in education - providing student-facing slide decks that allow
TEK TALKS is a series of webinars that was developed to foster understanding among scientists in regard to working with Indigenous People. View archived lectures and/or sign up for future lectures through the website.
Students will explain, both orally and in writing, a diagram used to illustrate a food web.
Objectives
Students will learn how language is used to communicate and is required to impart knowledge and sustain a healthy, traditional community in a modern world.
Students will learn strategies for communicating complex ideas to an audience.
Students discover how different organisms that live in the Arctic depend on each other and what might happen to the food web if one or more organisms disappears from it. Students will build an arctic food web.
Objectives
Students will learn that organisms are part of a global food web and linked to each other and their
Sea ice, the thin layer of ice that covers most of the Arctic Ocean and surrounds most of the Antarctic continent, represents a distinctive feature of our planet. The attached flyer, produced by the International Polar Year (IPY) Programme Office, includes a summary of information about sea ice including sea ice formation, movement, monitoring, seasonal patterns, and forecasting. A follow-up
Students will use marshmallows to simulate toxins in the environment. Concentrations of these toxins will be modeled and calculated as they bioaccumulate up the food chain. Methylmercury and POPs are substances that bioaccumulate in the Arctic food chain. OASIS scientists studied these in Barrow, Alaska. (See Ocean Atmosphere Sea Ice and Snow (OASIS) Project at www.polartrec.com)
This lesson answers the question: How does ice floating on the ocean act as it melts?
Objective
* Students will learn about temperature, salinity and their effect on density.
* Students will learn that ocean currents are caused by differences in densities as a result of temperature and salinity. These differences allow ocean currents to circulate water
EarthSky Communications Inc. is a digital media company and a clear voice for science heard around the world. EarthSky creates over 12 million impressions for science daily through a variety of popular brands including the Earth & Sky daily science podcast series, the EarthSky Clear Voices for Science extended interviews with scientists. Be sure to visit Cielo y Tierra website
Students will take some time and look at the PolarTREC website journals, pictures, and forums to learn about a certain teacher, researcher, or polar science expedition that has already taken place or is currently taking place. Students will use the attached worksheet to think more deeply about a polar researcher's job and work.
This website features webcam images of the North Pole and is hosted by NOAA. The Arctic Theme page also hosts a variety of educational resources about the Arctic.