Lesson Plans
This section includes lesson plans that have links to Aquarius science projects and the physics of underwater diving. The lesson plans were developed for all grade levels and address topics in the Life Sciences, Physical Science, Earth Science, Biology, and Chemistry.
Please don’t hesitate to provide feedback based on your classroom experiences. Each lesson plan outlined below links to a fully developed section using the PDF format. If needed, you can get Adobe Acrobat here. The focus question for each lesson plan is summarized to help you select the plans that work best for you.
- Aquarius Reef Base Crossword Puzzle
- Dive In!
- How do buoyancy, pressure, and light affect the work of underwater scientists? Archimedes’ Principle is investigated, students compare and contrast atmospheric and underwater pressure, and how light is affected as it passes through water is explored.
- Pipeline to the Coral Reefs
- How is the condition of coral reefs affected by physical oceanographic processes? Students will define and describe internal waves and analyze and discuss the effect of high nutrient concentrations on the condition of coral reefs in Florida. An internal wave movie is available based on real data collected from Conch Reef.
- Petite Partners Packing Powerful Punches
- How can high densities of corals survive in an environment that has low concentrations of planktonic prey? How do many corals respond to stress caused by high water temperature during summer months? A PowerPoint supplement (in PDF format) is available with this lesson plan: Nutritional Boosts in the Marine Environment. Also available is an Excel Spreadsheet to use with the data that includes extensive information and instructions about how to analyze the data.
- Designing an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV)
- Build a model AUV and investigate the engineering principles behind the design of underwater robots, and how they relate to locomotion in aquatic animals like fishes, sea turtles, and whales.
- Are you Concentrating?
- Students will be able to explain the importance of concentration gradients and flow velocity (the movement of water) to the nutrition of reef–building corals.
- Counting FishStix
- Students will learn how scientists estimate the population size of different fish groups by collecting and analyzing data from surveys they conduct in the classroom.
- The Good, the Bad, and the Nasty Tasting
- How do seaweeds and soft–bodied invertebrates living attached to the bottom, where predatory fishes and invertebrates are abundant, avoid being eaten? How do scientists determine the ecological roles of natural products produced by marine organisms? Two PowerPoint supplements (in PDF format) are available with this lesson plan: 1) Chemical Punches in the Marine Environment and 2) Chemical Ecology.
- Design Your Own
- What are experimental designs and why are they a critical component of scientific research? What steps are involved in designing a scientific research project?
- The Aquarius Construction Task (pending)
- The construction task focuses on how teams of scientists communicate to achieve a common technical goal. This classroom activity was designed to match with construction tasks performed by NASA astronauts who participate as aquanauts during Aquarius missions.
