Lesson Plans

Learn about our charismatic California sea lions! Georgia Aquarium’s education team has created some engaging curricular resources to use in the classroom prior to visiting SunTrust Pier 225 to see our Under the Boardwalk sea lion presentation . Learn about what our California sea lions eat, the characteristics of their habitat, and the threats they face.

• Dinner Dilemma (grades 3-5) – Students will learn the role of producers, consumers, and decomposers in a California sea lion’s community and how complex a food web can be.
• Where in the World Do Pinnipeds Live? (grades 6-7) – Students will discover that pinnipeds (sea lions and seals) can be found all over the world in addition to the coast of California. Students will identify where pinnipeds are found throughout the world on a map and explore the adaptations pinnipeds use to survive in their habitats.
• Classification Station (grades 6-8) – Students will learn why scientists classify animals and will classify the animals living in kelp forests, with an emphasis on how California sea lions interact with their environment.
• Sea Lion! (grades 6-8) – Students will discuss how limiting factors such as predation, resource availability, and competition impact California sea lion populations.

• Feature Fanatics – Students will match animals together by their physical features.
• Penguin Life Stages – Students will identify and build the life stages for African penguins.
• Walking into the Deep – Students will extend light visibility to the ocean zones and relate animals to their home zone in the ocean.

• Conservation Badge – Students will research conservation efforts of organizations toward specific animals.Students will also study and choose to implement methods of conservation that they can do themselves.
• Brook to Ocean – Students will create a model of a watershed and observe how watersheds contribute to an ecosystem. Students will also evaluate how pollution of any water source can affect an ecosystem.
• Flowing Landscapes – Students will determine physical changes in a landscape caused by waterways and will analyze satellite imagery of a region.
• Parts of a Food Chain – Students will conduct research to create a food chain from a specific environment. Students will also hypothesize what will happen if one element of their food chain is removed.

• Filtration Sensation – Students will construct a device that has the ability to filter dirty water and distinguish important applications of water filtration.
• Oil Spill Impacts – Students will analyze the effects of human impact UMEs on the cetacean population in the Gulf of Mexico. Students will also identify what a UME is and its lasting significance on the environment.
• Current Convection – Students will produce an experiment demonstrating convection in water and test density levels.
• Sounds of the Ocean – Students will analyze marine mammal spectrograms and will graph marine mammal sound frequencies.

• Balancing the Ocean – Students will use stoichiometry to create a balanced equation.
• Echinodermata vs Mollusca – Students will identify anatomical features of sea cucumbers and nudibranchs.
• Ocean Acidification – Students will discover how increasing carbon dioxide amounts in the atmosphere impact acidification in the ocean. Students will also investigate the impacts that ocean acidification has on shell and skeleton building organisms.
• Sustainable Seafood – Students will construct a menu that will help ensure fish populations for generations to come. Students will also analyze resource availability and cost of obtaining fish