The Aleutian Islands, between Alaska and Siberia, have earned the name "Cradle of the Storms" due to their wild weather. Students will view a two-part series about the Aleutian islands and answer questions related to the film.
Objective
Students will learn about the Aleutian Island chain in Alaska and answer questions to reinforce learning.
Students will sort organisms found in the Bering Sea into food chains and gain an awareness of the flow of energy and nutrients in the Bering Sea Ecosystem.
Objective
Students learn about the different organisms that live in Alaskan waters by playing the Fabulous Food Chain Game. In playing the game, they become aware of the flow of energy
Working in groups, students will use common materials to create layers of snow and ice representing thousands of years of stratification. Groups will exchange their ice layers and extract core samples to analyze them.
Objective
Notice the phenomenon of stratification.
Notice that layers can tell a story of change over time.
The Kuril Biocomplexity Project is a National Science Foundation-funded research project led by the University of Washington and being conducted by a team of American, Japanese and Russian scholars and students who are examining a 5000-year history of human-environmental interactions along the Kuril Island chain in the northwest Pacific Ocean. This is the link to the project website.
Diatoms are one of the main kinds of phytoplankton we found blooming in the Bering Sea. They are so beautiful, little glass houses with green gems inside. They occur in huge numbers in the Bering Sea in the initial spring ice melting algae bloom. Having one to touch and look at puts a face on what it is
Maggie Prevanas joined scientists in the Bering Sea where sampling to measure the productivity of the Bering Sea Ecosystem was conducted. Maggie learned about the role microscopic organisms, diatoms, play in algae blooms, carbon cycling, and global warming. Maggie developed a lesson using scientific illustration to introduce diatoms to her students.
In this lesson, students learn about what archaeologists do and then practice implementing these skills with "real artifacts".
Objective
Students will:
* be able to define an artifact and an archaeologist.
* use evidence to support their decisions about the origin and use of an unknown item.
The study of rock and sediment layers, or stratigraphy, can be used to introduce students to the fundamental principles of geology and to lead into the idea of geologic time. In this lesson, students are introduced to Nicolas Steno's 3 major laws of stratigraphy: the law of original horizontality, the law of superposition and the law of lateral