National Ocean Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
This lesson provides a demonstration and lesson focused on ocean currents. The demonstration of how cold water and warm water interact is a strong learning tool for the topic.
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Watch the film associated with this and the other lessons in the guide. From the intro to this NOAA lesson set: "This guide includes 8 elementary school level lessons, inspired by topics from Ocean Odyssey, a film for IMAX and other Giant Screen theaters. Watching the film is not required to carry out any of these lessons, but can serve to enhance students' learning experience of the topics presented in these activities." Take a look at the full 8-lesson set that this resource is a part of for more background information.
Ice, hot water, and food coloring experiment. Along with a data recording comparison of two cities, and a comic strip that the students can design.
The activity can be divided into smaller parts. More details available in resource.
The lesson includes a demonstration about the way in which temperature differences/heat create movement in water and then moves to a data comparison between two cities. Both activities are scientifically sound and help students perform creative inquiry.
It may be helpful to connect the demonstration and data comparison with more scientific information on the movement of water, which is provided in lesson two of the full lesson set that this activity is a part of.
Passed initial science review - expert science review pending.
Both the demonstration and data comparison are easy to guide and teach, but they may require a little more background information than the lesson provides. Take a look at lesson two in this lesson set. The Science on a Sphere (SOS) video is helpful in providing a broader overview of global ocean currents, but it doesn't necessarily help to explain Tasmania's climate. Taking a closer look at ocean temperatures at a few places in the world after watching the SOS video might help students understand these concepts.
Modeling the movement of water with food coloring and temperature differences is engaging, and the creation of a comic strip at the end can hit on different learning styles of the students. Group data analysis and graphing can be helpful for all types of learners, including a helpful extension activity.
Technically sound as long as teachers have a good internet connection. This lesson will require moving between a demonstration, work sheets, and online materials. That may be challenging in some classroom spaces.
