The class puts together a website to correlate with the thematic unit on the ocean. Links to websites about the ocean, including hurricanes, conservation, and the oceans ecosystem, are listed on the website. Student work is published on the website. The website also allows parents an opportunity to learn more about what their children are studying in school.

Involved a large beach ball with a map of the world drawn on it. Students take turns catching the ball with their fingertips and note whether their left index fingers touch water or land. On student records how many times it touches land and how many times it touches water. The objective is for students to gain an understanding of how much of the world is covered by ocean. This would best be done in groups with a whole class discussion to follow.

Students are given a list of questions about hurricanes and search for the answers on www.hurricanehunters.com.   Examples of questions to find the answers to are: "How many miles per hour do the winds in a hurricane blow," "What parts of the world are hurricanes common," and "What is the eye of the hurricane?"

Students write a first person fictional account of witnessing a hurricane. The writing process, including a final draft, is modeled for them by the teacher. Brainstorming, story mapping, and peer editing are part of the writing process.  Students use graphic organizers.

Students construct a model coral reef in a shoe box. Glue, construction paper, string, shells, sane, tape, markers, and crayons are required. Students are instructed to include two kinds of animals and two kinds of plants in their model.

Find two different cultural legends about the ocean from http://www.floridasmart.com/subjects/ocean/mystery.htm.  Discuss why cultures develop stories about the ocean. Have the students create a Venn diagram to compare and contrast the legends from different cultures. Instruct students to write about why they think ocean legends evolved in their journals.

Have students brainstorm and develop their own legends about the ocean. Guide them through the writing process from brainstorming to final product. Final products will be published on the class website.

Students create an actual (preferably saltwater) aquarium for the classroom. They can discuss what kinds of plants and animals they want to have in the aquarium before acquiring materials. Students put together the aquarium as a community building activity. Students are assigned different jobs to care for the aquarium.

The class embarks on a trip to a local aquarium. Before the trip, studentsdiscuss what they expect to see on the trip. After the trip, they write in their journals about what they experienced.

Shell Riddles

This activity correlates with reading What Lives in a Shell? by Kathleen Weidner Zoehfeld.  Students create shell riddles following a model demonstrated by the teacher.  These riddles are written on one side of an index card.  The answer to the riddle, the shell, is drawn on the opposite side of the index card.  For example, one side of the model card reads: I have no legs. I don't have any legs or tails. I swim by snapping my two shells together quickly. Who am I?  The opposite side of the card has a picture of a scallop and reads: A scallop.  This story would be a good segue into the octopus lessons because shellfish are mentioned in An Octopus is Amazing.

This game involves a board that has a ladder with ten rungs drawn on it. Each of these rungs has a card. The cards have a question about octopuses that is based on information from the story An Octopus is Amazing by Patricia Lauber. Explain to the students that they need to work as a team to figure out the answers to the questions on the card. The students are permitted to look in the book for answers. A cooperative learning environment is facilitated by giving each student a role in the game. Examples of roles are card reader, fact checker (student to look in the book to check to see if the answers correct), cheerleader, materials manager (student in charge of returning all of the parts of the game to the teacher), and recorder.

The teacher uses a computer with a projector to go to http://home.clara.net/pka/haiku/haiku.html.  The students are shown examples of haikus found on this website. Through process writing and modeling, the students write their own haikus. Their final drafts are decorated with colored paper and glitter and will be displayed in the classroom. Finals drafts are also be published on the class website.