Aliens in Our Oceans: Cephalopods
Introductory Lesson - created by Faye Josephson

Overview
Into Activity
Through Activity
Assessment
Extensions
References
Worksheet

Overview: Interaction of Beliefs and Ideas

It is essential to pre-assess student knowledge and elicit what students already know or believe about these animals. Research has shown that our mis/conceptions restrict our ability to learn, and that uncovering student misconceptions allows the teacher to redirect student thinking early in the unit, before those conceptual errors interfere with integration of new knowledge (Byrnes, 2001). By allowing students to articulate what they know and believe about these animals, the teacher acquires foundational knowledge that informs lesson planning, such as how much time to spend on each aspect of these animals and avoids repeating what the students already know (NRC, 2001)

This lesson plan includes multiple activities employing diverse learning strategies in order to appeal to many different achievement levels. By facilitating a variety of activities that support diverse learning styles, teachers increase the likelihood of increasing student achievement (ASCD, 1995).

The game suggested as the Into Activity engages the students with a silly premise that encourages students to rediscover what they know and believe about these animals, and focuses their thinking on the physical characteristics of these creatures, as well as the implications those characteristics have on each different animal’s behavior.

Into Activity: Where in the world is Ceph?

Time: One class period for simple pre-assessment.

Materials:
Large Sheets of Easel sized paper: for recording known characteristics
Markers: different colors for each group
Masking tape or 2-sided tape

Procedure:

1. Explain to the students that they must find Ceph, an ornery and clever octopus. In order to know where to look, students must pool their knowledge of his likely whereabouts. It would be helpful to find Cuttle, Nauty and Squidly, since they usually know where to find Ceph.
2. Students need to be divided into groups, up to four per group: each group should ideally contain a mixture of learning styles and temperament.
3. Have each group choose one of the four main types of cephalopods; more than one group working on the same order of cephalopod is acceptable if they work independently; there is quite a lot of species diversity within this class of animals, so students should be able to find significantly different types to study. See
4. Each group lists on the easel paper the most likely places the order of cephalopod might be (according to their present level of knowledge) and when it might be there. They may have access to resources if they have no idea what they are looking for: cuttlefish, for instance. Explain that it may be necessary to bribe their critter for information, so have students decide the most useful bribes for that animal: food, habitat location, available mates, etc. Tell them that you know where a really attractive squid can be found!
5. Disperse the groups throughout the room, leaving enough room to place the recording sheets on flat surfaces to record the information.
6. You may choose to have students research these animals if they possess little prior knowledge. See Deeper Depths/Extensions, which follows. Provide picture books for younger learners or more content oriented texts for more accomplished learners. Having the students augment their knowledge initially to orient them to these animals and their lifestyles gives the unit a jumpstart.
7. Set a time limit for the activity, leaving ~ 15 minutes for discussion and argument, for simple pre-assessment; leave 3-5 minutes for each group to present their findings to the class for group presentations.

Through Activity: Discussion/Debate:

1. Have each group display their findings (tape the easel sheets to classroom walls) and explain how they came to those conclusions. They must provide evidence for each characteristic or item listed. This allows the students to articulate how they came to those conclusions.
   ** It is important to forgive student errors at this point and allow students to argue their positions. Remember that you are gathering information about student beliefs at this point. Fact-finding and correction comes later when they do more research.
2. Leave the documents on display for comparison later in the unit, or remove them and place them on display again at the end of the unit to allow students to visualize how much they have learned from the following activities.

Assessment:

Formative: Use the information the students provide via this activity to focus your subsequent lessons. If student knowledge is correct and deep, plan for extensions and greater depth; if their knowledge is faulty or shallow, plan for more inquiry during additional research.

Deeper Depths/Extensions:

Writing Assignment Have students prepare a letter from their animal to one of its siblings describing its new home, neighbors and circle of friends. Have students write an outline of the criteria for the letter or have them develop a rubric themselves.

Guided Inquiry
Proceed with a guided research activity to broaden student knowledge of how these animals live, feed, mate and behave. Research can be either web-based or text based, depending on class access to technology. If technology access is unavailable or unreliable, print one class set of selected resources and use them to augment available text-based resources. Additional text, video and Internet resources are included in the Topic Overview for this unit.

Three primary resources to explore:

• Intro to Cephalopods: http://is.dal.ca/~ceph/TCP/
• A Broad History of Cephalopods: http://is.dal.ca/~ceph/TCP/evolution.html
• Learning Resources for Teachers & Students: www.nrcc.utmb.edu/MODEL.html

Together, they contain a wide array of general knowledge concerning this class of animals The NRCC website contains both simple and complex anatomical drawings of all four orders of cephalopods; Drawings of reproductive, circulatory and nervous systems; details regarding anatomy and physiology, listed by order; directions for squid dissection; and lots of basic cephalopod facts.

Photos and videos are dispersed throughout the websites listed, but the primary resource is Cephbase: photo library and database at http://cephbase.nrcc.utmb.edu
Additional photos are available at:
Brandon Cole: www.brandoncole.com/gallerypage12.htm
Zubi’s Photos: www.starfish.ch/reef/index.html
Palaeos: www.palaeos.com/Invertebrates/Molluscs/Cephalopoda/index.html

Procedure:

1. Have students form at least four cooperative groups and have each group research one class of cephalopod.
2. Guided Inquiry: Devise a teacher-prepared characteristic/trait activity sheet as an outline for their research. See example worksheet that follows at end of this lesson. List the major characteristics that that influence adaptation and diversity I animals, which will focus student research.
3. Full Inquiry: Have the students develop a research worksheet themselves. Allow them to design the document during one class period as a group, with the teacher acting only as a facilitator. One student stays at the board and acts as a scribe as the class designs the document. The scribe records the pertinent traits that the students agree they need to research for each class of cephalopod.
4. Groups research each type of cephalopod, employing the worksheet as a guideline for their exploration; usually takes 3 days for basic research. Typically, students discover the deficiencies in their thinking on their own as they proceed with the research. This tends to open their minds to new knowledge and understanding.
5. Groups report to the class one group at a time. Recall that the objective of this lesson is species diversity and adaptations, not the inclusion of specific traits or content.
6. After the presentations, ask questions that help students make connections to related topics such as genetic variation among related species, physiology, and anatomy.

Additional Activity: Investigate the contents of an octopus midden; check scientific references for resources.

References

Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Robert W. Cole, Ed. (1995) Educating Everybody’s Children: Diverse Teaching Strategies for Diverse Learners.
Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Byrnes, James P. (2001) Cognitive Development and Learning in Instructional Contexts. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

National Research Council. (2001) Classroom Assessment and the National Science Education Standards. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.