Activity or Mini-Lesson

Identifying New Species Classroom Warm up

Placecard - How do you use the database to identify a sample?

Ocean Exploration Trust

Classroom Warm-ups: Kick-off any lesson with these one-page, observation-building, problem-solving STEM prompts — whether or not you’re teaching an ocean topic.

Teach your students about the many ways in which new species are discovered and what processes help to confirm their identification.

Objectives & learning outcomes

After the warm up, students should be able to answer the following questions:

Why is eDNA a useful method in trying to classify marine species?
What are two new pieces of information you learned from Dean?
What role does math play in furthering this research?
What are two additional questions you would want to ask Nautilus explorers based on this research?