Entry Event

If you have a favorite sea animal book, you can read it to your students. If you don't, I suggest starting the unit with Ocean Life by Jill McDonald. It's got beautiful illustrations and talks about some common sea animals. My favorite part about this book is the ending. It asks the reader what their favorite animal is and is a great way to get them excited and interested in the topic. 

Click here to buy  Ocean Life from Amazon. Or visit your local library to see if they have a copy. 

This can be a field trip to a local aquarium or ocean conservatory. Or having a local marine biologist come and present/talk with the class. 

If you are close to any bodies of water, or know of any marine biologists, try doing a virtual tour of an aqaurium. Not sure which one to choose. Heres's an article with aquariums offering virtual tours. 

1. What do you notice in the ocean animals' tanks?

2. Have you ever seen one of [insert ocean animal] before?

3. What do you notice about the ocean animals? 

4. What can you tell me about this animal? 

After the entry event, it's time to introduce the project and the driving questions and sub-questions to the students. I recommend having the driving question have its sheet that lives somewhere in your classroom so it's always visible. 

Next, we can start to fill out the K and W sections of the KWL chart for the ocean animal section of the project.