Diving Deeper: Follow Up Programs

These programs are classroom-based and do not include the inflatable whale, making them an excellent follow-up if your school has previously hosted our inflatable whale visit. Perfect for the following year, these 45-minute lessons are designed to engage students in collaborative activities such as completing tasks, solving challenges, or creating projects together. 

Ocean animals are classified in a similar way to land animals: mammals, birds, fish and reptiles. We will explore different animals in the ocean and define their characteristics. Finally, students will identify animals from videos.

We will explore what characteristics make up reptiles, mammals, birds, and fish in the ocean. How can we recognize a type of animal based on its body parts? Students will then create their own animals and share with us where it lives. 

Animals in the ocean need food, water, shelter, oxygen and space to survive. We will go through a variety of animals that live in the ocean and talk about how they survive. Finally, students will take what they learned and create their own ocean organism and share with us how it survives.  

Many animals in the ocean create sounds to communicate with each other. We will explore different animal sounds and how scientists can detect those sounds to learn about where animals can be found in the ocean.

Scientists study humpback whales by looking at the patterns on their tails. Students will match whale tails, explore how and why they can change over time. Then, students will evaluate before and after pictures of individual whales and the class will identify the main threats that humpbacks off the coast of MA face. 

 We will explore the ocean ecosystem and put together a food web. Food is a major predictor of where animals will be found. Right whales have shifted their location in the past 15 years. Students will graph actual sighting data from right whales and make observations about what has changed. Can they predict there they will be next summer?