Exploring The Oceans

This start grid serves as the launcher for the "Exploring the Oceans" unit, and it is is opened when a student double-clicks this unit's title from Clicker Explorer. Each small graphic on the launcher is a link to the book it illustrates.

The anchor book, Oceans, is listed first, followed by the other two content books: Marine Life, which is organized into chapters, and A Scuba Adventure, in which students choose their own path through the story.

Below the three content books are comprehension gridsets for the anchor book and for Marine Life, and a journal relating to the adventure book. Oceans Writing Overview is a combination comprehension and writing exercise. A word sort exercise rounds out the unit. Students can return to the Clicker Explorer list by clicking on the Home button, in the lower right part of the grid (house within a circle).

You can click on any of the book covers in the launcher graphic above to jump to screenshots from that book and a brief description of it. You can also access that information by scrolling down this page. After each description, you can click a link to return here and try another title. This unit is included in both Ecosystems Collection A and the full Wonders and Magic of Nature collection.

The anchor book for the unit, Oceans, introduces students to the largest of the biomes. In fact, oceans cover more than seventy percent of the Earth's surface, and are the home of an amazing array of plant and animal life. On this page a pop-up grid displays a map with the names and boundaries of the various oceans around the world.

Students learn about the various zones of the oceans, from the surface and sunlight zones down through the twilight zone and into the abyss, and about underwater structures such as shelves, trenches, and seamounts. This diagram illustrates how oceanographers use sonar to map the deep ocean floor.

This book follows the anchor book, and provides students an opportunity to show their comprehension of the subject through a series of multiple choice questions. Each set of three questions is preceded by a photograph originally seen in the anchor book, to jog the students' memories and make this exercise more than a simple drill.

On this page, the pop-up grid with the four answer choices for the second question is open. A student would click on the correct answer to insert it into the cell just below the question.

A table of contents format was used to organize and present the enormous variety of animal life in the oceans. The first chapter has an overview of life in the shallows.

The following chapter covers invertebrates such as molluscs, crustaceans, and jellyfish.

The remaining chapters survey the whales, seals, and other marine mammals, and fish including eels, rays, and sharks.

Photographs, sounds, and videos are vital in bringing the diversity of marine life to students.

This example page from the Fish chapter shows part of a video in which students see large fish and larger sharks at close range.

A photo of a beautiful ray enlivens the cover of What Do You Know About Marine Life? After completing the survey of various types of marine life, students show what they have learned by answering the questions in this book. Photos from the Marine Life book precede question pages, with three multiple choice questions per page.

The Ocean Research Adventure book takes students aboard a research vessel where they can observe oceanographers studying the deep ocean by means of remotely operated submersibles. Students click one of the two large buttons on each page to go to the next point of interest.

There are eight different paths available in the book and students are asked to take notes during the trip so that they can later document their observations.

A specail highlight of this adventure story is a set of videos, many with the voices of scientists as they collect specimens and comment on the features of the ocean floor.

Pop-up grids give students a chance to control these videos as if they were operating the submersible at various depths and locations.

When students complete the Ocean Research Adventure, they get a chance to write up their observations. A pop-up grid with photos from the adventure enables students to insert one photo on each page of the journal.

They then write about what they saw during the research trip, using the photos to organize their observations. The finished journal is saved and also can be printed.

Ocean Writing Overview gives students a chance to write about topics from all three of the content books from the study unit. Photos jog their memories and then on the following page they are asked a specific question.

They write the question and answer into Clicker Writer, aided by words ready to insert from the grid and by wordbanks, including one with the specific vocabulary for the Oceans unit.

The final lesson in the unit asks students to sort words that they have seen in this unit from those they have encountered in another unit. In "Exploring the Oceans", students sort words from the oceans and wetlands units. Students choose items from a pop-up grid and insert them into two cells, representing Oceans and Wetlands.

In this screenshot, a student has opened the pop-up grid with the words to be sorted and is preparing to click the words related to oceans, in order to insert them into the cell. When they have finished sorting the words, the gridset is saved into their portfolios where it is available for review.