1. Teacher Guide
This lesson is designed to teach kids to ask a critical thinking question that you can’t just put into a search box to solve. To do that, we encourage them with smaller questions that search can help them answer. Make sure that you read the notes for each slide: they not only give you teaching tips but also provide answers and hints so you can help the kids if they are having trouble.
Remember, you can always send feedback to the Bing in the Classroom team at You can learn more about the program at bing.com/classroom and follow the daily lessons on our Partners In Learning site.
Want to extend today’s lesson? Consider using Skype in the Classroom to arrange for your class to chat with another class in today’s location. And if you are using Windows 8, you can also use the Bing apps to learn more about this location and topic; the Travel and News apps in particular make great teaching tools.
Nell Bang-Jensen is a teacher and theater artist living in Philadelphia, PA. Her passion for arts education has led her to a variety of roles including developing curriculum for Philadelphia Young Playwrights and teaching at numerous theaters and schools around the city. She works with playwrights from ages four to ninety on developing new work and is especially interested in alternative literacies and theater for social change. A graduate of Swarthmore College, she currently works in the Artistic Department of the Wilma Theater and, in addition to teaching, is a freelance actor and dramaturg. In 2011, Nell was named a Thomas J. Watson Fellow and spent her fellowship year traveling to seven countries studying how people get their names.
This lesson is designed to teach the Common Core State Standard: Reading: Informational Text
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.3.3 Describe the relationship between a series of historical events, scientific ideas or concepts, or steps in technical procedures in a text, using language that pertains to time, sequence, and cause/effect.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.3.5 Use text features and search tools (e.g., key words, sidebars, hyperlinks) to locate information relevant to a given topic efficiently.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.4.3 Explain events, procedures, ideas, or concepts in a historical, scientific, or technical text, including what happened and why, based on specific information in the text.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.4.9 Integrate information from two texts on the same topic in order to write or speak about the subject knowledgeably.

2. How do underwater habitats like Aquarius help oceanographers do their work?
© Stephen Frink/Corbis
Having this up as kids come in is a great settle down activity. You can start class by asking them for thoughts about the picture or about ideas on how they could solve the question of the day.

3. How do underwater habitats like Aquarius help oceanographers do their work?
Today, filmmaker and ocean explorer Fabien Cousteau, grandson of legendary oceanographer Jacques Cousteau, will began a 31-day research project here in the NOAA’s Aquarius Reef Base. Aquarius, deployed in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary in 1992, is an underwater living space and lab where researchers gather data about the health of the reef. The oceanographers beginning their 31-day mission today hope to set a record for staying in the submerged facility longer than any other crew. Welcome to “Mission 31.”
Depending on time, you can either have students read this silently to themselves, have one of them read out loud, or read it out loud yourself.

4. How do underwater habitats like Aquarius help oceanographers do their work?1
Web Search
What is an oceanographer? 2
What is an underwater habitat? 3
Who was Jacques Cousteau and what does he have to do with underwater habitats? 4
What will the underwater habitat Aquarius be used for? 5
Thinking
How do underwater habitats like Aquarius help oceanographers do their work?
There are a couple of ways to use this slide, depending on how much technology you have in your classroom. You can have students find answers on their own, divide them into teams to have them do all the questions competitively, or have each team find the answer to a different question and then come back together. If you’re doing teams, it is often wise to assign them roles (one person typing, one person who is in charge of sharing back the answer, etc.)

5. How do underwater habitats like Aquarius help oceanographers do their work?5
Minutes
You can adjust this based on how much time you want to give kids. If a group isn’t able to answer in 5 minutes, you can give them the opportunity to update at the end of class or extend time.

6. How do underwater habitats like Aquarius help oceanographers do their work?1
Web Search
What is an oceanographer? 2
What is an underwater habitat? 3
Who was Jacques Cousteau and what does he have to do with underwater habitats? 4
What will the underwater habitat Aquarius be used for? 5
Thinking
How do underwater habitats like Aquarius help oceanographers do their work?
You can ask the students verbally or let one of them come up and insert the answer or show how they got it. This way, you also have a record that you can keep as a class and share with parents, others.

7. How do underwater habitats like Aquarius help oceanographers do their work?1
Web Search
What is an oceanographer?
(Possible queries: “what is an oceanographer?", "define: oceanographer").
From
A scientist who deals with the physical, chemical, geological, and biological features of the oceans and ocean basins.

8. How do underwater habitats like Aquarius help oceanographers do their work?2
Web Search
What is an underwater habitat?
(Possible queries: “underwater habitat", "oceanography underwater habitat”)
From
Underwater habitats are underwater structures in which people can live for extended periods and carry out most of the basic human functions of a 24-hour day, such as working, resting, eating, attending to personal hygiene, and sleeping. In this context "habitat" is generally used in a narrow sense to mean the interior and immediate exterior of the structure and its fixtures, but not its surrounding marine environment. Most early underwater habitats lacked regenerative systems for air, water, food, electricity, and other resources. However, recently some new underwater habitats allow for these resources to be delivered using pipes, or generated within the habitat, rather than manually delivered. Much of the science covering underwater habitats and their technology designed to meet human requirements is shared with diving, diving bells, submersible vehicles and submarines and spacecraft.

9. How do underwater habitats like Aquarius help oceanographers do their work?3
Web Search
Who was Jacques Cousteau and what does he have to do with underwater habitats?
(Possible queries: "Jacques Cousteau underwater habitats", "Jacques Cousteau biography").
From
Jacques Cousteau; 11 June 1910 – 25 June 1997, was a French naval officer, explorer, conservationist, filmmaker, innovator, scientist, photographer, author and researcher who studied the sea and all forms of life in water.
The first inhabited underwater habitat, Conshelf I (Continental Shelf Station), was developed by Jacques Cousteau and constructed in Built to record basic observations of life underwater, Conshelf I was submerged in 10 meters (33 ft) of water near Marseilles, and the first experiment involved a team of two spending seven days in the habitat.

10. How do underwater habitats like Aquarius help oceanographers do their work?4
Web Search
What will the underwater habitat Aquarius be used for?
(Possible query: “underwater habitat Aquarius”, "Aquarius underwater mission").
From
Aquarius is located under 20 m (66 ft) of water at the base of a coral reef within the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, an ideal site for studying the health of sensitive coral reefs. The laboratory is most often used by marine biologists for whom Aquarius acts as home base as they study the coral reef, the fish and aquatic plants that live nearby and the composition of the surrounding seawater. Aquarius houses sophisticated lab equipment and computers, enabling scientists to perform research and process samples without leaving their underwater facilities.
The habitat accommodates four scientists and two technicians for missions averaging ten days. Scientists on the Aquarius are often called "Aquanauts". Because Aquarius allows saturation diving, dives from the habitat can last for up to nine hours at a time; by comparison, surface dives usually last between one to two hours. These long dive times allow for observation that would not otherwise be possible. Way stations on the reef outside Aquarius allow aquanauts to refill their scuba tanks during dives.

11. How do underwater habitats like Aquarius help oceanographers do their work?5
Thinking
How do underwater habitats like Aquarius help oceanographers do their work?
Answers will vary. Students should pull together the information they have gathered to articulate that an oceanographer is a scientist who studies oceans. Underwater habitats, first developed years ago by Jacques Cousteau, are structures in which oceanographers can carry out basic human functions while fully surrounded by the marine environment they are researching. The new 31-day mission in underwater habitat Aquarius will allow oceanographers to perform research and process samples without leaving the facilities. They can also go on observational dives that last for much longer than surface dives do.

12. How do underwater habitats like Aquarius help oceanographers do their work?
This slide is a chance to summarize the information from the previous slides to build your final answer to the question.