Field Research Viewed From the Classroom

Polar TREC, NOAA’s Teacher at Sea Program, and the ARMADA Project are a few of the programs that students can tap into in order to learn how scientists conduct real research. Discover how a... See More

Polar TREC, NOAA’s Teacher at Sea Program, and the ARMADA Project are a few of the programs that students can tap into in order to learn how scientists conduct real research. Discover how a teacher in Texas partnered with oceanographers and other scientists in Barrow, Alaska to learn how chemical and physical factors affected the distribution of whale food. The teacher then created a series of lessons and activities for students to use. For the whale food project, students were assigned to teams where they designed a presentation for the class that represented their group’s view on whether Canadian Inuits should be allowed to continue hunting bowhead whales. Each presentation was based on the factual information gleaned from the action research that was conducted in Barrow. This was a very interesting article, and it modeled how the work of scientists can be made more visible and pertinent to students.