The Virginia Beach Department of Public Utilities and NTC invite you to use these e-learning resources to teach your students about the importance of energy efficiency and conservation. The digital materials below are designed to get your students excited about understanding these important subjects.
Want to know the best way to use the related videos, e-books, games and other lessons to educate your class? Watch this short video and learn how to easily add Aqua Avengers to your curriculum.
Our live in-school theatrical programs are a great way to educate students about a wide variety of important topics. Theater has the ability to capture imaginations and educate at the same time! This 25-minute show features two engaging actors performing a fun story that keeps kids laughing and learning.
Aqua Avengers teaches viewers about the following educational points:
During the show, your students will learn important lessons about water conservation. You can use the lessons and activities on this page to prolong the engagement for months to come.
We know your class time is extremely valuable. That’s why we ensure that all of our digital e-learning materials are aligned with state and national educational standards. It’s important that the Aqua Avengers program adds to your existing curriculum and keeps students on track with their ongoing learning.
See below for details about how each digital activity aligns with educational standards and corresponds with your state’s curricula.
The Aqua Avengers student activities page features games, educational lessons, downloadable PDFs, e-books, Power Play games and more! Access in the classroom or at home to learn more about water conservation and have fun joining the Aqua Avengers!
This downloadable PDF features colorful artwork, entertaining games and activities, and expanded information to complete your understanding of electrical safety. Read on your own, with your class or with friends and family and get to know the Aqua Avengers.
This colorful, illustrated e-book is a great follow-up to the live program. Students can read to themselves or with others, and younger students can use the read-along option. The e-book takes your students on a new adventure and includes fun interactive activities throughout.
Young readers love comic books. They can be a great way to get reluctant readers to participate. The high-quality graphic novel gets students excited about continuing the journey they started with the live program. With fun artwork and entertaining characters, the graphic novel offers a page-turning experience.
Your students can enhance what they learn from the program with these fun, hands-on lessons and experiments. These lessons can be done in the classroom or easily adapted for students to do at home with their families.
They’re a fun and educational way for students to learn with family members. The materials needed for these lessons are basic supplies that most people have at home. Follow up with your students to make sure they enjoyed and learned from these activities.
Objective
Students will learn about the smaller lifeforms that live in ponds.
Purpose of Activity
Read or listen, Identify Details, Apply Skills
21st Century Skills
Critical Thinking, Collaboration, Creativity
Cognitive Level
Strategic Thinking, Extended Thinking, Skills and Concepts
Class Time
60 minutes
Materials
Procedure
Divide students into teams of three. Each of the students has a vital role in the exploration:
Reader: This student scientist will read each question to the group, and any guides or scientific keys used.
Recorder: This student scientist will write down the answers that the group comes up with for each question.
Artist: This student scientist will sketch the organism.
Introduce students to the equipment that they will be using. This will consist of a Petri dish lid or base (to hold the organism being studied), a plastic spoon (to collect organism from water), a pipette (to collect really small organism from water) and a hand lens. Each team of “researchers” will have one of each item.
Select one student from each group to collect the organism from the pond water basin. Demonstrate the proper technique to catch and not hurt the animals. Explain that though the organisms are small, they are still living specimens and should be respected. Once an animal is caught in the Petri dish basin, the students can now do their research. The collector can carefully carry the Petri dish with the organism back to the other students in the study area.
The recorder and the reader should sit adjacent to one another. The animal in the basin should be available for all of the students to make observations, and the hand lens can be shared. If the desks are dark, placing white paper under the dish can help the students to see small details. The reader should read each question to the group. The group can then discuss and observe, and the recorder can write down the answer the group decides on.
When all of the questions are answered, a student should render a sketch of the organism. The picture should be much larger than the organism. All of the students can suggest details to the artist. The style of the sketch is entirely up to the artist.
The final observation is to identify the organism. Students can match their artist’s drawing to scientific illustrations.
Once the identification is confirmed by the teacher, the animals can be returned to the pond.
Critical Thinking Questions
How do you think organisms living in the pond survive?
What would happen if the organisms living in the pond disappeared?
Objective
Students will identify places that animals live. Students will identify that some animals can live in more than one habitat.
Purpose of Activity
Apply Skills
21st Century Skills
Critical Thinking, Collaboration, Creativity
Cognitive Level
Strategic Thinking, Skills and Concepts
Class Time
15 minutes
Materials
Procedure
Gather students together, and explain how energy moves through the food chain. Plants make energy and grow from the sun. Herbivores (plant-eating animals) eat the plants. Carnivores (meat-eating animals) eat the plant-eating animals. Other carnivores may eat them.
Describe plankton, and its role in the environment. Explain how plankton creates the base of many marine food chains. You can ask a student for a favorite sea creature, and describe a food chain from the sun to that animal. For example, if a student says ‘shark,’ you can create the following food chain: sun-plankton-shrimp-little fish-big fish-shark. Describe how whales use great gulps of sea water and their special teeth (baleen) to gather up the plankton. Explain how clams and oysters draw water into a siphon to do the same. Explain how jellyfish use tiny tentacles to sting and capture plankton, etc.
Once the students have a basic understanding of the role of plankton in the marine environment, introduce the rules of the game. There is no running, no pushing, etc. Explain that the students will become the filter-feeders. They will mimic the filter-feeders as follows:
Use these motions to “become” these filter-feeders. Once the bubbles (plankton) arrive, we can “eat.” Practice the motions with the students until they can change from one to another with ease.
Have the students pretend to start to float or swim in the sea.
Once the students are adrift, start blowing bubbles. The children should continue drifting. Tell the students that the bubbles represent plankton, drifting on the currents. Once there are a good number of bubbles, tell the students that they can now be whales, and “feed” on the plankton. Remind them that they should pop the bubbles with their arms and hands, not their mouths. After a short time, tell the students to become jellyfish, then clams. Go back to whales, jumping from one motion to another.
After 10-15 minutes, bring the students back to the starting point, and analyze which strategies were best or worst.
Critical Thinking Questions
Did all of the plankton get eaten?
Could the filter-feeders eat without moving?
Adapted from: https://www.dec.ny.gov/docs/administration_pdf/lpplankton.pdf
You’ve covered the basics of water conservation. If you really want to dig deep with your class, explore the expanded information and additional resources below.
These materials provide even more insight into the history, science, usage and importance of water conservation. There are also helpful links and tips.
Expanded Information 1:
Ninety-seven percent of the Earth’s water is salt water in the ocean. Two percent is stored as fresh water in glaciers. This leaves only 1% of all the water on Earth as water for people to use. If all the world’s water were put into a gallon jug, the fresh water available for us to use would equal only about one tablespoon.
Students will calculate how many 8-ounce glasses of water they are made of.
That’s about how many 8-ounce glasses of water it would take to equal all the water in a person.
By the time a person feels thirsty, his or her body has lost over 1% of their total water amount. Drink water before you get thirsty.
Facts:
Expanded Information 2:
Plankton is defined as floating plants and animals that cannot move against the current under their own power. We usually refer to any floating, small or microscopic organism (plant or animal) as plankton.
Plankton is divided into phytoplankton (plant plankton) and zooplankton (animal plankton). Phytoplankton is made up of single-celled and multi-cellular green organisms that use photosynthesis to live and grow from solar energy, in much the same way plants do on land. Phytoplankton lives and dies floating around on the currents of the world’s oceans, bays and estuaries. Zooplankton includes a vast array of tiny animals that feeds on phytoplankton and one another. Zooplankton includes many animals that never get very large, as well as eggs of fish and marine invertebrates and many larval forms of familiar sea creatures (crabs, lobsters, jellyfish) that leave the plankton as they mature.
Many types of marine animals feed by forcing sea water through filters to remove edible particles from the water. This method of capturing food is known as filter-feeding. Bivalves, such as clams and mussels draw water into their body through a siphon, pass it through a series of filters and expel the water, digesting the microscopic organisms that were floating in the water. Baleen whales use their brush-like teeth to strain small shrimp, krill and fish from the sea water. Barnacles use a fan-like tail to scoop plankton from the water like a child might use a butterfly net on insects. All of these methods are types of filter-feeding.
Adapted from: https://www.dec.ny.gov/docs/administration_pdf/lpplankton.pdf
Fun for Kids (Virginia Beach Department of Public Utilities)
Follow-up, formative assessments for you to gauge the learning of your students are especially important with e-learning. Below are some suggestions for how you can assess your students’ performance quickly and effectively.
These assessments are easy for you and your students to complete and help ensure your class is getting the maximum educational value, retention and engagement from the related digital activities.
| Elementary Educational Assessments | Livestream | Hands-on lessons | Digital games | E-book | Graphic novel | Interactive activities | PDFs & Print materials |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ask students to reflect on the topic and draw their thoughts on paper | X | X | X | ||||
| Write one or two sentences identifying the main point | X | X | X | X | |||
| Think-pair-share | X | X | X | ||||
| One-question quiz | X | X | |||||
| Journal reflection | X | X | X | ||||
| Have students discuss three things they learned, two things they still want to learn, and one question they still have | X | X | X | ||||
| Hand in completed activity | X | X | |||||
| Submit screenshot of completed activity | X | X |
We take your feedback and suggestions very seriously. Hearing from educators with firsthand experience with our programs ensures that we continue to improve our digital resources, making them as beneficial as possible for you and your students.
Please complete this brief, two-minute evaluation to let us know what you think about the program. Enter the code you received on the half sheets from our actors or call us for your access code.
Thank you for your time and valuable input.
