Background information that could lead to inquiry

This article provides two activities and a website to a third, more detailed, activity that introduce the concepts of stratification and dissolved oxygen. The third activity provides specifi... See More

This article provides two activities and a website to a third, more detailed, activity that introduce the concepts of stratification and dissolved oxygen. The third activity provides specific examples of locations and shows how scientists use the information to explore those dead zones. This activity could easily be adapted to middle and some of it to upper elementary classrooms to show these topics. While it is not an inquiry activity, the third part shows how data is used to explore this topic and could easily lead to inquiry of a local body of water or remote using things like Google Earth to locate locations and NOAA data to set up databases to investigate. I like the progression presented here and the way it explains how to use the data to discover more about this topic and I would highly recommend this article and resources.