TEACHERS TAKE NOTE

Sea Soup:
Phytoplankton

Mary M. Cerulllo

Photographs by Bill Curtsinger

Hardcover, $16.95; ISBN 978-0-88448-208-6

9 x 10, 40 pages, color photographs

Published with the Gulf of Maine Research Institute

Children / Science; Grades 3-6

Sea Soup:
Zooplankton

Mary M. Cerulllo

Photographs by Bill Curtsinger

Hardcover, $16.95; ISBN 978-0-88448-219-2

9 x 10, 40 pages, color photographs

Published with the Gulf of Maine Research Institute

Children / Science; Grades 3-6

Sea Soup Teacher's Guide:
Discovering the Watery World of Phytoplankton and Zooplankton

Betsy T. Stevens

Illustrated by Rosemary Giebfried

Paperback, $9.95, ISBN 978-0-88448-209-3

8.5 x 11, 96 pages, illustrations

Published with the Gulf of Maine Research Institute

Children / Science; Grades 3-6

The microscopic plankton world depicted in these volumes will provide children with a fascinating look at tiny ocean drifters whose ecological importance is far beyond the measure of their size. The cutting-edge photographs by renowned photographer Bill Curtzinger give children the opportunity to observe and learn and about the beauty and importance of these tiny plants and animals and their watery world.

Science educators are now being encouraged to persue their subjects on an inquiry-based model of learning. These books and guides incorporate this approach in their design.

Sea Soup: Phytoplankton and Sea Soup: Zooplankton will help inspire classroom conversations about:

• Plankton's place in the food chain
• The importance of phytoplankton in producing oxygen
• The connection between phytoplankton and petroleum
• Identification of the next generation of commercially important species

Activity: Make a Giant Food Web

If classroom space allows, the class can create a giant ocean-food web with creatures created out of papier-mache, or large, two-dimensional cutouts hanging from the ceiling. The feeling created can be one of entering the sea soup in a tiny sub and observing a food web in action.

• Assign teams to create models (to scale if possible) of organisms that exist in particular roles in the food chain.
• One group can be charged with creating a variety of herbivores, small to large, that feed on phytoplankton. Another group creates the primary producers, the phytoplankton.
• Another group creates larger, secondary consumers (carnivores).
• And, finally, a group creates the largest carnivores (whales, dolphins, seals, sharks, humans).
• Don't forget to create the sun to hang in the midst of the web! When the students complete their artwork, help them hang the critters around the room. You might choose to take a ball of yarn or string and, starting with the sun, cut lengths of yarn to attach the sun to the primary producers (phytoplankton), then the primary producers to the plant-eaters (herbivores), etc. The end result is a gloriously complex web of life.