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Lesson plans are available for this expedition. Download them from this page, just visit the link to the left.
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Education
Read a description of each lesson plan and/or download them to your computer.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is supporting an interdisciplinary exploration team of U.S. and Canadian scientists during one of its major Voyages of Discovery in the Pacific Ocean. During the Expedition, the explorers will be investigating the birth of new ocean crust at the bottom of the ocean off the coast of western North America, part of the Pacific “Submarine Ring of Fire.” Volcanic ridges lying as close as 60 nautical miles of the northwest U. S. and Canada are part of the world-girdling Mid-Ocean Ridge system, a 60,000-km long series of seafloor spreading centers where new earth is born. The Mid-Ocean Ridge is the beginning of a giant conveyor belt, whereby new ocean floor created at mid-ocean ridges are welded to giant moving plates that are ultimately recycled at island arcs and deep-ocean trenches. From June to August 2002, the exploration team on board the research vessel Thomas G. Thompson will explore the Explorer Ridge, one of the elongate volcanoes of the mid-ocean ridge in the northeastern Pacific where the Pacific Ocean conveyor belt originates.
Because this Expedition has great potential for generating exciting outreach and education opportunities as part of NOAA’s Ocean Exploration education efforts, educators and scientists working with NOAA during June 2002 developed a series of lesson plans for students in Grades 5 – 12 that are specifically tied to the Submarine Ring of Fire Expedition. These lesson plans focus on cutting-edge ocean exploration and research, using state-of-the-art technology. The lesson plans focus specifically on the importance of ocean exploration and the research taking place during the Submarine Ring of Fire Expedition, and feature such topics as biology and chemistry of hydrothermal vents, ecology of hydrothermal vent sites, plate tectonics, and the origin of Americans in North America and their ties to submerged coastlines.
The lesson plans are grouped into the following categories:
Grades 5-6
Grades 7-8
Grades 9-12 (chemical, biological, earth, physical science, and anthropology).
Each grade-level grouping includes activities that focus on the exploration and research being conducted as part of the Submarine Ring of Fire Expedition. In addition to being tied to the National Science Education Standards, the hands-on, inquiry-based activities include focus questions, background information for teachers, links to interesting Internet sites, and extensions. Web logs that document the latest discoveries and complement the lesson plans, complete with compelling images and video, will be sent back each day from sea. Teachers are encouraged to use the daily logs from the Submarine Ring of Fire Expedition, which are posted on this site, to supplement the lesson plans.
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