Exploring Alaska’s Seamounts - Lesson Plans Below are descriptions of lesson plans have been developed for students in Grades 5 – 12 and are specifically tied to the Alaska Seamount Expedition. The lesson plans are grouped into the following categories: Grades 5-6 Grades 7-8 Grades 9-12 (chemical, biological, earth, and physical Science). All of the lesson plans are available in pdf format, and may be viewed and printed with the free Adobe Acrobat reader. To download a lesson plan, click on its title from the listing below. Contact Paula Keener-Chavis, National Education Coordinator for the NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration at paula.keener-chavis@noaa.gov if you have questions about the lesson plans or if you need additional information about their development. Grades 5-6 Feeling Crabby? (8 pages, 100k) Focus: The effect of depth on deep-water crab reproductive biology in the Gulf of Alaska In this activity, students will analyze data from a simulated sampling program to investigate the influence of water depth on size at reproductive maturity among deep-water crab populations, interpret results of their sampling program to draw conclusions about changes in size at reproductive maturity associated with water depth, and apply their results to draw conclusions about appropriate fishery regulations to protect reproductive opportunity among deep-water crab populations. Volcanoes, Plates, and Chains (7 pages, 116k) Focus: Formation of seamounts the Axial-Cobb-Eikelberg-Patton chain, Gulf of Alaska In this activity, students will be able to describe the processes that form seamounts, describe the movement of tectonic plates in the Gulf of Alaska region and explain the types of volcanic activity that might be associated with these movements, and describe how a combination of hotspot activity and tectonic plate movement could produce the arrangement of seamounts observed in the Axial-Cobb-Eikelberg-Patton chain. (top) Grades 7-8 Biological Communities of Alaska Seamounts (5 pages, 108k) Focus: Biological Communities of Alaska Seamounts In this activity, students will be able to infer why biological communities on seamounts are likely to contain unique or endemic species, calculate an index of similarity between two biological communities given species occurrence data, make inferences about reproductive strategies in species that are endemic to seamounts, and explain the implications of endemic species on seamounts to conservation and extinction of these species. Mapping Seamounts in the Gulf of Alaska (5 pages, 176k) Focus: Physical description and mapping of seamounts in the Axial-Cobb-Eikelberg-Patton chain In this activity, students will describe major topographic features on the Patton Seamount, interpret two-dimensional topographic data, and create a three-dimensional model of landforms from two-dimensional topographic data. (top) Grades 9-12 Breaking Away (Or Not . . .) (5 pages, 96k) Focus: Life Science - Reproductive/developmental strategies of some benthic seamount species In this activity, students will be able to compare and contrast common reproductive strategies used by benthic invertebrates, describe the most common reproductive strategies among benthic invertebrates on a seamount and explain why these strategies are appropriate to seamount conditions, describe how certain reproductive strategies favor survival of species on seamounts and what changes on seamounts might favor other strategies, and discuss the implications of reproductive strategy to the conservation and protection of seamount communities. History’s Thermometers (5 pages, 80k) Focus: Physics – Use of deep-water corals be used to determine long-term patterns of climate change In this activity, students will be able to explain the concept of paleoclimatological proxies, learn how oxygen isotope ratios are related to water temperature, and interpret data on oxygen isotope ratios to make inferences about climate and climate change in the geologic past. Mystery of the Alaskan Seamounts (9 pages, 132k) Focus: Earth Science - Formation of seamounts in the Axial-Cobb-Eikelberg-Patton chain, Gulf of Alaska In this activity, students will be able to describe the processes that form seamounts, learn how isotope ratios can be used to determine the age of volcanic rock, and interpret basalt rock age data from seamounts in the Gulf of Alaska to investigate a hypothesis for the origin of these seamounts. Rock Eaters of the Gulf of Alaska (8 pages, 104k) Focus: Chemistry, Biology, Earth Science - Chemosynthetic microbes in basalt rocks In this activity, students will be able to compare and contrast the processes of photosynthesis and chemosynthesis, identify and describe sources of energy used by various organisms for chemosynthesis, and predict what chemosynthetic reactions might be possible in selected “extreme” environments. (top)