Billion Oyster Project has newly created several inquiry-based and NGSS-aligned standalone lessons for your classroom. These lessons are designed as engaging, informative ways to use oysters as an anchoring phenomenon to teach common content. These lessons can be taught individually and fit into your scope and sequence, or used as content-based context for Billion Oyster Project programs like the Oyster Research Tank or Oyster Research Station.
All resources are in Google Suite, so you can easily make a copy of anything and modify it to fit the needs of your classroom. More lessons like this to come throughout the year!
Our Lessons
Oysters are a Keystone Species
In this reading investigation, students figure out the many important roles that oysters have in their ecosystem. Depending on grade level, students may complete a jigsaw read or participate in collaborative sensemaking from a shared text, and build foundational knowledge of oysters and their ecosystem functions.
Oysters are Shoreline Protectors
In this hands-on lesson, students design and build a structure that can break wave energy before it hits land. They collaborate through the engineering design process, figure out that there are many possible ways to solve the problem, and reflect on the role that oysters play as natural breakwaters.
Oyster History in New York Harbor
In this interactive history lesson, students review facts from the last 400 years of NY Harbor history, and discuss the decisions of people in the past to consider the impact those choices have on our resources today. Students then make observations and inferences of images to create a timeline of these changes.
Oyster Anatomy and Life Cycle
In this hands-on lesson, students explore oysters’ unique anatomy and life cycle. Students may observe patterns in the oyster’s development and how structures change over time, or dive deeper into different structures’ functions and how they work together as a system