The NOAA’s National Ocean Service collects data and studies input relating to tides. From this vantage point, NOAA has developed a series of lessons on ocean tides that teachers can use to teach middle school students. The NOAA website includes a tutorial, “Tides and Water Levels,” on the systems that impact tides. The tutorial also provides basic information about what causes tides.
NOAA also offers a “Roadmap to Resources” that provides additional input and data from NOAA and other sources. This serves to complement the input that the tutorials provide. The resources include a video on storm surges and podcasts about tides. This input can help provide visual support for lessons on ocean tides.
Massachusetts Marine Educators, an organization whose members are teachers and others with an interest in education, endeavors to make students more literate about the marine world. One lesson that the MME uses to teach middle school students about ocean tides is the plotting of high and low tides in an area, as well as moon phases, using real data over a period of a week. This helps students understand the impact of the moon on tides.
Creatures that live in the intertidal zone along coastlines, between the confluence of ocean and land, face certain unique challenges due to the action of the ocean tides. PBS offers input for lessons on the creatures in the intertidal zone and how they have adapted to their habitat. In one such lesson, students study marine organisms to determine how they have adapted in order to survive in their environment.