Students investigate how the rocky shore changes between high and low tide and use evidence from texts, habitat-sorting tasks, math data, and the Birch Aquarium visit to explain how those changes affect living things. Working in teams, they read signs and short texts, identify and sort common creatures by habitat, count and graph observations, and revise their ideas and questions after fieldwork. The project builds science understanding, data literacy, and informational writing while giving students regular chances to reflect with partners, respond to peer feedback in gallery walks, and share learning with families and community guests through their mural, creature cards, and Splashback Night display.

Students will read short informational texts, captions, and aquarium signs to gather evidence about how changing tides affect rocky shore organisms, then write one-sentence captions and one research question for the aquarium visit. They will identify common rocky shore creatures, use habitat clues and scientific vocabulary to sort where organisms live at high and low tide, and explain how tide changes affect survival. Students will collect or use observation data to count organisms, compare groups, and create picture or bar graphs that show patterns in tide-pool life. They will collaborate to revise predictions, captions, and questions after the field trip, reflect on both science learning and teamwork, and share their findings through the mural, creature cards, and family exhibition.

Students will create Poké-Tide creature cards with habitat facts, tide-change notes, and student-written research questions, plus quick tide-pool sketches, one-sentence captions, and simple bar or picture graphs from observation data. Throughout the project, groups will add drawings, revised captions, prediction notes, and Birch Aquarium reflections that include one new fact and one feeling. By the end, the class will complete a collaborative shoreline change mural that combines sketches, graphs, and sticky-note reflection spaces to show how high and low tide affect rocky shore organisms. These products will be displayed as an interactive exhibit for Splashback Night, where partners use them to share their learning with families and community guests.

Kick off with a Poké-Tide Quest station rotation where teams sort rocky shore creature cards into high-tide and low-tide habitats, match habitat clue cards, and collect simple count data to graph on a class chart. After the rotation, reveal the essential question and have groups make a quick prediction about which creature is most affected by changing tides, then write one research question to investigate during the Birch Aquarium visit. Close with a 2-minute partner chat about their prediction and one feeling or wonder they have about how the rocky shore changes.

Host a Birch Aquarium Splashback Night where partners present their shoreline change mural sections, Poké-Tide creature cards, quick tide-pool sketches, bar graphs, and revised captions to families, classmates, and community guests. Students can explain how the rocky shore changes from high tide to low tide, share one new fact and one feeling from the aquarium visit, and point out how their thinking changed after comparing predictions with field-trip evidence. Set up the room as an interactive gallery with sticky-note stations so visitors can respond to student drawings, data displays, and captions with one science understanding and one collaboration strength they notice. If possible, invite university science mentors to attend, ask questions, and celebrate how groups used observation, reading, writing, and math to study rocky shore life.