Oceans Unit - Ocean Animals Research, Ocean Craft, Ocean Habitat

Dive deep into the ocean with this science unit all about oceans and ocean animals! This ocean unit integrates ELA standards and will keep your students highly engaged and having fun, all while learning. 

In this ocean unit, you and your students will meet Ollie the marine biologist who will help them do some detailed studies on various ocean animals such as whales, sharks, dolphins, octopuses, seahorses, krill, and sea turtles. For each lesson there is a text passage for close reading and reading detective sheets! 

Here’s what you’ll get with this ocean unit:

• Oceans vocabulary cards
• Letters From Ollie the Marine Biologist
• Ocean Observations Journal
• Student dictionary
• Graphing 
• Maps
• Experiments 
• Crafts
• Reading passages
• Writing challenges
• Teacher instructions and tips

Help your students become Jr marine biologists in this ocean unit as they discover facts about oceans and learn to classify ocean animals that live in it as either fish, mammals, invertebrates or reptiles. 

❤️ This standards based ocean unit included an engaging integration of ELA and science content! Your students will start the unit off highly motivated to help Ollie the Oceanographer complete his classifications. Plus, this unit covers a variety of reading and writing standards for 1st and 2nd grade. 

The reading passages and text-based questions included can easily be differentiated as there are two versions of each! 

All materials are carefully planned and ready to print! You will sail through this unit as it comes with detailed teacher directions and tips for the hands on oceans activities. 

A breakdown of the oceans activities:

• Key core content vocabulary cards (with pictures) 
• Student Ocean Dictionary - to record new vocabulary and use it in a sentence.
• Letters from Ollie the Oceanographer - the class will receive two letters from Ollie the marine biologist. The first will assign them their task from Ollie for the next few days. The second will thank them for their work at the end of the unit. 
• Animal Classification Display & Animal Pictures - Teachers can create a display to showcase the classifications (Fish, Mammal, Invertebrate, and Reptile) and pictures Ollie has sent under the correct category.
• Ocean Life Journal - Used for student to record what they are learning about ocean animals from the included text passages and your classroom studies 
• World Ocean Maps to identify & label oceans – teacher poster and students black and white copy
• Reading Passages & Text Based Questions - Passages for each ocean animal. There are two versions of each passage to allow for easy differentiation based on the needs in your classroom. Shorter passages contain larger print and only one reading detective question while longer passages contain three reading detective questions on a separate page.  
• Layers of the Sea - Layers of the Ocean flipbook 
• A Salty Experiment - Students will conduct experiments to see if an egg will sink or float in salt water. Directions & students response pages included. 
• Baby Sea Turtle Fact Craft - Students create baby sea turtle craft and record one fact about them to put on their shell
• Shark Craft & Opinion - students will write an Opinion piece about sharks to go with their craft! 
• Ocean Inference Craft - Students will use what they have learned about their favorite ocean animals to create an inference craft where they list 3 clues about their ocean animal and draw the correct answer behind their diver.
• Graph - Would It Be Fun to Scuba Dive? - Students create class and individual graphs, analyze the class data, and share their opinion about scuba diving.

Writing Extensions to pick from: 

• Write a letter back to Ollie
• Ocean Life Food Chain (Shared Research)
• Animal Ocean Reports (Shared Research)
• Problem/Solution
• Response (Informative or Opinion Writing)
• Whale of a Tale Student Book (Narrative Writing)

✅ Download the preview to view full sample pages. Enjoy your underwater exploration!! :)

What are teachers saying…

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ “Wow!! What a GREAT resource! The letter from Ollie really drew my students in and got them excited to learn about oceans! Excellent Job! Thanks for sharing!” - Emily G.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ “I really like this product. It's nice that it hits on several different things, classification, interesting facts, comprehension, etc. all while being very engaging.” - Brea H.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ “I love the way this is set up! The students love the letters from the marine biologist! Wonderful and engaging! Thanks!” - Lindsey S. 

© Stephanie Stewart - Falling Into First