Andrea's Portfolio

The Teacher at Sea Program     

The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Teacher at Sea Program sends educators out to sea to work alongside scientists conducting oceanographic research. While educators are at sea on various research vessels, they create blogs and lessons they can share with their community. This instructional unit was written after I spent two weeks on board the Oregon II assisting scientists as they conducted the summer groundfish survey. This unit, written for my elementary science classes, was developed to teach students ocean literacy principles and connect them with real-life ocean science.

I taught this unit to my fourth, fifth, and sixth grade students during the 2013-2014 school year after I returned from the research experience. I used the unit with over 300 students that year and have continued to utilize parts of the unit in subsequent years. Students always enjoy seeing real pictures of ocean science and their teacher conducting science.

Learning at Sea

The Teacher at Sea program has been an influential program in my teaching career, not only giving me the opportunity to experience many things I love, but also broadening my knowledge of what teaching science can look like in the classroom. It was important to include this unit in my portfolio as evidence of how I met the goals of the Teacher at Sea program. Teachers are required to write blogs (3-5 per week), a career lesson, a research lesson, and give a presentation about their experience. I chose to write a short unit rather than a single lesson as the concepts covered tied directly to the science standards at my school. Not only does the unit provide an example of my science teaching expertise, but it also highlights my ability to incorporate real data into my science lessons. The unit also connects to my Teacher at Sea blogs I wrote while at sea, which are linked in this section of my portfolio.

From the comments I received in talking about my Teacher at Sea experience and sharing these lessons with my students, my most common reaction was awe and excitement. This unit helped other teachers realize that one concept can be taught in many different ways. It also taught students the importance of collecting and interpreting data. This instructional unit was strong in bringing real scientific data into the classroom, exposing students in a land-locked state to ocean literacy principles, and incorporating hands-on science.

Improving My Practice

While the unit incorporates real science, it could be strengthened in many ways. At the time it was written, the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) had not been adopted by many states, hence the alignment to the Colorado State Standards. The new standards require students to go deeper with scientific concepts and include examining data and modeling and supporting claims with evidence. The unit could bring the concepts to a deeper level of understanding. The unit could also be strengthened by tying in my blog entries to the lessons. By doing this, students would be able to read about the real-life science they are trying to emulate in the lessons, providing opportunity for deeper learning and inquiry. There were also several opportunities to incorporate other subject areas within these lessons (i.e., graphing with math, reading informational text, and research). For example, the invasive species lesson on lionfish could have served as a springboard to a research project on other invasive species in the Gulf of Mexico or elsewhere in the ocean.

This unit was written after my first experience as a Teacher at Sea, and since that time I have become even more immersed in ocean education through various partnerships with local ocean scientists and organizations promoting ocean literacy in the classroom. I also participated in a second Teacher at Sea voyage (in July 2015) to Alaska to help scientists conduct the annual walleye pollock survey. Reflecting on the unit, I can see some of the gaps in my own understanding of concepts within the unit, such as overfishing and sustainability. I also see many opportunities to transform this unit from teacher-centered lessons to inquiry-based lessons, and even opportunities to incorporate science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) concepts.

Evolving Lessons

This unit recently was transformed as it was the basis for a problem-based learning unit I taught our elementary classes. We took some of the concepts addressed in the original unit, such as overfishing and sustainable seafood choices, and used them to drive our unit based on the question: “Should people inland care about the ocean and why?” The lessons in this original unit were then used to help teach the concepts of monitoring fish populations, overfishing, and sustainability. Because of my increase of knowledge, the updated information available through NOAA and Seafood Watch, two primary resources in the unit, students walked away with a deeper understanding of the concepts of overfishing and sustainability.

In writing this unit, and in reflecting on both of my Teacher at Sea experiences, I have learned many lessons. First and foremost, I believe it is important to teach students how their actions, no matter how far they are from the ocean, affect the ocean. Therefore, it is important to bring ocean literacy into all classrooms. Second, the real-life job of a scientist doesn’t always fit the textbook definition of science. There are many careers aside from being a scientist that incorporate scientific concepts. Lastly, science is everywhere!