Explore -- Reefs in Danger?

Teacher Activities

Student Activities

EXPLORE concepts related to the threats to the coral reefs' destruction by participating in making the causal table including the threats, the causes and the consequences of threats.

Break students into small teams and assign each member of the team to a different role of the following in order to investigate the threats to the coral reefs including (e.g. over-fishing, coastal development, global warming, and marine pollution, etc.)

Role 1: Overfishing

Bombs, poison, and scrapers damage habitats

Role 2: Coastal development

Coastal development

Role 3: Global warming

Role 4: Marine pollution

Marine pollution

Role 5: Hurricanes and Typhoons (http://www.uvi.edu/coral.reefer/threats.htm Especially read third to the last paragraph)

Optional additional roles:

Crown of Thorns Starfish

(http://www.uvi.edu/coral.reefer/threats.htm Especially read second to the last paragraph)

(http://www.aims.gov.au/pages/
reflib/cot-starfish/pages/cot-000.html Good question and answer section on crown of thorns starfish)
Volcanoes

(http://www.sei.org/impacts.html Especially read section toward the bottom of the page entitled, “VOLCANIC IMPACTS ON THE CORAL REEFS”)

Ask each member to share the results from their investigation and make an overall flowchart that includes four different causes and consequences of threats to the coral reefs.

Prompt each group to make their presentations.

Debrief presentation by prompting discussions on the relationship between the causes and consequences.

Teacher Background

Most reefs within U.S. waters are threatened

Students activity:

Each students choose one of roles.

Research Background

Each student in the group examines the threats of coral reefs and the relationship between threats and consequences on coral reef health.
Each students participate in group discussion

Each group make a flow chart in Activity Sheet: Finding causal relationship(RD-1)

Each group presents the results from their investigation with the rest of class.