Delve into the Depths of the World’s Five Oceans!

Did you know that the Pacific Ocean covers thirty percent of Earth’s surface? Or that the Atlantic Ocean is home to the world’s largest underground mountain range?

Did you know that the Indian Ocean is the warmest of the world’s five oceans? Or that 50 000 tourists sail on the Southern Ocean every year? 

This compare and contrast activity will enable your students to learn more about the world’s five oceans while simultaneously fine-tuning their comparison skills. The resource download includes: 

• five information cards (one for each world ocean)
• a Venn diagram for comparing the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans
• a Venn diagram for comparing two oceans of their choice.

Place your students into small groups to read through the fact cards. Then, allow students to collaborate to find similarities and differences between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. More-confident students may like to work independently to compare two oceans of their own choosing.

Tips for Support and Extension

If you are supporting the needs of a diverse range of learners in your Geography class, you’ll need to differentiate this resource to ensure that all students can succeed.

Here are some tips for how you might support and extend students as they engage with this resource:

• Supporting Students – Highlighting can greatly help students who become overwhelmed with a lot of information on one page. Have students choose one colour for similarities and one colour for differences. This will help guide their decisions regarding adding facts to their Venn diagram.
• Extending Students – Have more-confident students use the facts on one of the cards as a starting point for a research project on one of the world’s oceans. The students could present their research to the class via a medium of their choice.

Easily Download and Prepare This Resource

Use the dropdown icon on the Download button to choose between the PDF or Google Slides version of this resource.

You may wish to print the task cards on thicker card for enhanced durability.

This resource was created by Beth Hindi, a Teach Starter collaborator.