Ploting Tidal Curves with NOAA Data or Local Data

Activity 14 presents a great design for students to graph and analyze NOAA tide data to uncover tidal patterns for one month from a specific area. The Activity Summary and Teachers’ Guide ar... See More

Activity 14 presents a great design for students to graph and analyze NOAA tide data to uncover tidal patterns for one month from a specific area. The Activity Summary and Teachers’ Guide are quite informative and student misconceptions are identified. If I were to use this activity, I would begin with asking what students believe about the nature of tides and encourage them to make predictions prior to looking at any data. Then, they could access data from a body of water near their home, if they live in a tidal area, or choose a specific area with data available from NOAA. Having students choose data from several areas so that groups could compare findings among each other, thereby uncovering patterns of change among different geographic areas would be an extension to this activity. An even better extension would be to have students actually measure tidal heights and times for a specific area over a period of a month or so if they perchance happen to live near one. This would really bring home the importance of tides and ocean structures within specified areas.