Jason Rubinstein, Abe Gelb, Dakota G
COSA
Activity Draft 2
Our activity is designed to educate informal audiences about the effects marine
transportation and the development of ports has on the diamondback terrapin in an
estuarine ecosystem. Through our hands-on activity, we will encourage self discovery,
guided learning, and inquiry from our participants. We intend for our activity to inspire
learning from all age groups and particularly inspire interest and curiosity from
individuals in grades K-12. Our activity will consist of a model our participants can
interactive with, which should be especially exciting for our younger audience.
Our goal is to illustrate the effect of marine transportation within an estuarine
environment on the diamondback terrapin. While educating our audience on this topic,
we hope to encourage hands-on learning through having our learners interact with our
estuary model. In addition to the model, through having a live diamondback terrapin, we
will allow our participants to have the opportunity to interact with the animal they are
learning about, which will help them internalize the significance of the lesson. Our lesson
is intended to promote a deeper appreciation for marine life and the delicate role marine
transportation and development has on individual species. Finally, it is our goal to inspire
a genuine interest in marine science from our audience and promote the desire from our
young participants to seek out further knowledge about our world’s oceans and
waterways.
It is a common misconception that there is no connection between marine
transportation and marine life. It is particularly unknown that in fact marine
transportation has a great effect on the environment of estuaries. Our lesson and activity
will bring to light the significant effect marine transportation has on estuarine
environments and marine life. Some concepts we will address are:
* How estuary’s must change to accommodate a port
* How these accommodations affect the life of a diamondback terrapin
* Instill the effect marine transportation has on marine life and marine ecosystems
* Depict how terrapins interact with both their natural estuarine environment and a
developed (disrupted) estuarine environment.
There are two ocean literary principles that strongly relate to our activity. They
include, “the ocean and humans are inextricably interconnected” and “the ocean supports
a great diversity of life and ecosystems”. Our activity will demonstrate that human
actions greatly affect all bodies of water and the marine life these bodies inhabit. Through
demonstrating an estuarine environment and having a live Terrapin, we will provide
evidence that the ocean (and other water bodies) supports numerous species and a wide
array of ecosystems. Key terms we will utilize and define in our activity include Estuary,
Estuarine, Channel, No Wake Zone, Habitat Destruction, Dredging, Pollution,
Industrialization, Development, and Reproduction. The following questions are ones we
plan to ask learners to determine how much they already know, engage them in the
activity, and encourage discussion (if a learner is unable to answer a question, especially
one of the first 3, we will provide them with a short informational session):
1. Where do you see boats on bodies of water?
2. What do you think an estuary is?
3. How do people interact with this environment?
4. How can we make this environment capable of transporting people?
5. What kind of vessels do you need to transport people in this water?
6. How can we make these boats capable of traveling through a shallow estuary?
7. Where does this sand go?
8. Where do turtles (diamondback terrapins) lay their eggs?
9. How might this process affect these turtles?
10. Where are these boats going to go?
11. How does the building of docks/dredging affect the ecosystem of Terrapins?
13. What can we do to protect the Terrapin?
14. How does the size of boats affect dredging?
15. How might we protect the Terrapin while accommodating the needs of people?
16. Other than Terrapins, how might boats affect other marine animals in the ocean?
We are utilizing the whole learning cycle for our activity. Our invitation is
essentially asking students what they know about estuaries and the effect marine
transportation has on marine animals. We will direct our audience to our model and ask if
they think boats travel in estuaries. We will also introduce some information about
Terrapins to inspire interest on our topic. Our explanation will essentially consist of
explaining relevant terms and concepts to our audience about estuaries, Terrapins, and
marine transportation and development. The exploration portion of our activity is our
most comprehensive section and will allow our audience to learn our concepts through
inquiry, active learning, and experimentation (this is the model estuary portion). Finally,
we will conclude our activity through helping our audience apply what they learned (final
stage of the cycle). We will ask some of our last several guiding questions (see above)
and also guide a discussion about how marine transportation and human development
may affect other marine ecosystems and species. We will also have some pictures
showing how dredging has impacted current ecosystems. This will essentially wrap up
our lesson. We will require the following materials for our activity:

Large Plastic tub
* Sand found in an estuary
* Turtle (Diamondback Terrapin)
* Styrofoam
* Popsicle sticks
* Toy Boat and Buoys
* Props
On a low table, we will create our activity. Our plan for the lesson is to have a
total of two replica natural estuary tanks set up. Along with two colorful models, we plan
on attracting guests to our lesson through having a live diamond terrapin (assuming it’s
lawful of course, we will confirm with the wetland institute prior to doing this). The
model will consist of sand, water, popsicle sticks that make up docks, boats, and various
other props. The sand and docks are moveable. Using the guided questions, we will
introduce what an estuary is to our audience, what a diamond terrapin is, and where it
lays its eggs. We will keep our explanations concise as to not delve to deeply into the
biology of Terrapins or the nature of estuaries. Then we will have our participants
interact with our identical models (there will be two so more people can get involved).
Our lesson plans will vary depending on who we are educating. The general lesson plan
for our model will be similar to the following: We will ask our participants if they can
help us transport some goods across our estuary. We will give them a boat and ask them
if they can help us bring this boat across, at which point the boat will be too big to travel
over the water. Then, we will ask them how they can solve this problem, which should
result in them dredging the water. After this, they will have to place the sand somewhere.
We will follow up by pointing out that the turtle will now have no where to nest. At this
step, the participant has several options. He or she can either still put the sand in the
turtles nesting grounds, or pick a smaller boat to travel across the water, or maybe even
find a different place to put the sand that allows the boat to travel across the estuary and
for the turtle to lay its eggs. Another lesson we can do involves the docks. We can start
by asking the students “where will these boats go in order to transport goods?” We will
guide them to understanding that docks are important for boats to transport goods. We
will have them place docks in our model so the boats can transport the goods. This
however may also disrupt the turtles nesting grounds. We will pose this problem to our
participants and see what they do about it. They could decide not to transport the goods,
they could also put docks in some areas but not others, as to allow some places for the
turtles to nest and some areas for the boats to take their goods, or they could put docks
throughout the model. Regardless of what they choose, we will explain to them the
repercussions. Ultimately, our goal is to stress the point that marine transportation in
estuaries harm terrapin populations and by reducing dredging and the construction of
ports, we can reduce this impact. Because there are 3 of us, if a new visitor shows up
while one learner is already in the process of doing the activity, one of us will catch up
the new learner on the side so he/she can engage in the activity with the original learner.
We will encourage creativity from our learners and allow them to use the materials
however they like. If they stray too far away from accomplishing the activity, we will
bring them back to focus using guided questions (listed above) and perhaps defining
more concepts. Our models will be pre-made and easily restored after each lesson. This
will ensure the same learning opportunity for each set of visitors. Upon finishing our
lesson with the models, we will proceed to our conclusion questions that will also
complete the learning cycle and allow our students to internalize and reflect on what they
learned (see the last several questions from our list). As I said before, we will also have
some pictures showing how dredging has impacted current ecosystems on our planet.
Though there is little background knowledge needed for the learner to know to do
this activity, it would be helpful for our audience to know what an estuary is. They should
also know that a Diamondback Terrapins reproduction is affected by the state of their
surrounding environment. Additional background information we can provide to them.