Teacher Resources

Are you a teacher? Looking for resources to enhance your students’ classroom experiences and help them learn about the ocean and its connection to our planet? Check out the resources available on the NOS Education website.

Development
Lesson Plans
Literacy
Curriculum
Students

Professional Development Resources

We’ve assembled a range of professional development materials to help teachers tackle marine science in the classroom. Within this section, you’ll find lesson plans, background information, resource links, tutorials, archived professional development seminars, media galleries, and interactive tools. Topics covered include corals, estuaries, oceans, weather, climate, and problem-based learning. The tools provided can be combined in a variety of ways to create rewarding learning experiences for students in grades 5-12.

Lesson Plan Library

Need lessons that are correlated to National Science Education Standards and the Ocean Literacy Essential Principles and Fundamental Concepts? Visit this section, where you’ll find comprehensive lesson plans that integrate online data from NOAA and other websites, to supplement existing curricula for middle and high school students. Lesson plans are available for the following subjects: chemistry, geography, Earth science, life science, math, and physical science.

Ocean and Climate Literacy

Our ocean and climate are intricately linked – to us and to each other. Understanding the important role of the ocean and climate have within our society are fundamental to building environmental stewards. This page provides the Ocean Essential Principles and Fundamental Concepts, and Climate Essential Principles and Fundamental Concepts, which present a vision of an ocean and climate-literate society.

Curriculum

Looking for complete sets of curricular materials? This page includes NOAA resources to help in teaching students about subjects such as estuaries, remote sensing, and ocean exploration. The materials are correlated to National Science Education Standards.

Student Resources

Also, be sure to browse through the resources on the NOS Education website that are designed for students. Interactive modules allow students grades 3-5 to have fun while exploring the ‘mysteries’ of seafloor mapping and nautical charts. Tutorials for grades 6-12 cover corals, currents, estuaries, global positioning, pollution, and tides. And, students can learn about invasive species by looking at the lionfish as a case study and oil spills by exploring the Exxon Valdez spill.