The Voyage of Turtle Rex FRA Lesson

The kids have loved the Florida Reading Association books this year! This round we read The Voyage of Turtle Rex by Kurt Cyrus.

The kids love dinosaurs, and this book introduces the prehistoric Sea Turtle, Archelon. I have tried to keep my focus on infusing science standards with my literature lessons, so this book was a great way to re-visit the life-cycle. Here are my lesson plans.  The Florida Reading Association glogster is a wonderful resource for additional activities to do along with the FRA books this year.

OCEARCH blogged about Ocean Palms!

Go to the OCEACH Blog right now! It is about their commitment to education and I couldn't be more pumped about how they were committed to my students at OPE!  Check it out, I celebrated with strawberry ice cream and chocolate syrup! :)
OCEARCH Blog

An afternoon with OCEARCH

Mrs. Underwood and Chris Fischer, Expedition Leader

Me, My husband Mike, and my dad Charles 

We really enjoyed this experience!

 Saturday, March 9, 2013Ocean Palms' fifth grade students were invited aboard the MV OCEARCH ship. We were welcomed aboard and quickly began asking questions, before the official tour began! The students and adults were eager to get answers, and to just hang out with the crew! The crew took us step by step with the hooking and bringing a shark aboard the ship. Each crew member explained their role and how important it is for the crew to work alongside each other so that they can get their samples from the shark and attach the tracking device, all in under 15 minutes. 

Learning from Alex all about their journey to Africa and how many days it took going 9 miles an hour!

Here with Todd, learning about the tackle used to catch the white sharks!

One of the buoys used to keep the shark from swimming down.

Mrs. Nichol's students gave a Shark Bite Thank You to the Crew!

Students with Mrs. Underwood (I look like a kid on the left)and Mrs. Nichol and Juan on the right.

OCEARCH Skype!

First I promised that I would show you a picture of our beautiful 16 ft cut-out of Mary Lee the white shark that was tagged by OCEARCH off the coast of Cape Cod this past September! She's beautiful and received a lot of attention at our Leadership Expo on Thursday night. The kids were running into the library to show their parents the OCEARCH Shark Tracker and our life-size Mary Lee! I am truly loving the excitement of learning more about white sharks!

On Friday, OCEARCH visited Ocean Palms' Library through Skype! It was amazing! I couldn't have been more proud of Mrs. Nichol's & Mr. O'Keefe's fifth grade students! The class came up with 7 questions to ask Chris Fischer and Heather Marshall of OCEARCH. Here is the link to the second half of our Skype with OCEARCH. They have been very generous in giving our students all the time they needed to get their questions answered. We had several students walking out after the skype wanting to become Marine Scientists! :)

OCEARCH in our Library!

I know...it's been awhile, but hopefully this post will make up for my absence!

OCEARCH is a nonprofit organization with a global reach for unprecedented research on Great White Sharks! For the first time in history, we are able to track Great White Sharks and hopefully gain information from this research.

OCEARCH is currently on Expedition in Jacksonville, FL (my hometown) where they are attempting to catch, tag, complete research, and then release white sharks. Sunday, March 3, they caught and tagged 1 white shark. They named here Lydia. Lydia is 14 ft. 6 in., 2,000 lbs. You can read more about Lydia on OCEARCH's Blog.

Before Expedition Jacksonville, back in September, OCEARCH caught and tagged 2 white sharks off the coast of Cape Cod. Mary Lee was the first, and then Genie. Mary Lee is the white shark that we are choosing to focus on in our Library because of the distance she has traveled since she was tagged.

We have been working on the difference between observations and inferences  and felt that this was a great way to use the Shark Tracker and more specifically Mary Lee.
Here I have posted Mary Lee's locations since she was tagged. The students are making observations and inferences using the map.

There is also a journal where they are documenting their observations and inferences.

A chart is up for the students to record their questions for the OCEARCH team, and I have tweeted them and gotten an immediate response!

I am posting the tweeted question and answers in the library so that all students can see.

I have also added a Great White Shark tab to my Symbaloo so that our students have access to the OCEARCH Shark Tracker and other websites on White Sharks!

Here's a pic of one student, checking out the OCEARCH Shark Tracker and Shark books!

Next, we will be attempting to re-create Mary Lee out of chart paper, I will definitely post those pictures once she is complete!

Our next goal is will be to get a skype session with OCEARCH!

I love that these guys have provided an education about white sharks globally and that right down the street, they are currently fishing for white sharks, which helps our students to have a real world connection! 

THANKS OCEACH!