Release week Jan. 28, 2007: Prehistoric Oceans

Standards

• Current Events: Students will make a brief time scale of current events.
• Science: Students will create a large collection of prehistoric ocean creatures on a poster or bulletin board.
• Science: Students will create a multimedia depiction of the breakup of Pangea.

Activities

• Use the News: The geologic time scale shows how the Earth and its creatures evolved over time. Make a brief time scale of events as represented in the newspaper. Do any articles report on a succession of events? When did each occur? How much time elapsed from beginning to current time? Examples might include political events such as electoral campaigns and the final elections.

• Make individual posters or combine group efforts to make a bulletin board of prehistoric marine creatures. Continue the same format as the animals in this WoW edition -- picture, name and brief information. Use books, encyclopedias, the Internet, etc., to find the pictures and information. The pictures could be printed or hand-drawn. The layout could be random or in a linear timeline.

• Use a graphic-media computer program such as PowerPoint or HyperCard to create an animation or sequential depiction of the prehistoric break up of Pangea. Separate pieces of the supercontinent could be drawn and saved. The “pieces” could then be copied and pasted again and again on each frame, moving apart little by little.

World of Wonder meets many state educational standards. This guide helps teachers identify standards and related activities generally intended for grade 6, but teachers can modify activities to the appropriate grade level.