Extra Saturday post! I wanted to draw your attention to a FREE Shark Week-inspired resource I posted on TeachersPayTeachers, with additional teaching details here.
Those who know me know my wild obsession with sharks. It’s a love borne out of countless childhood summers spent soaking in an annual pastime favourite: Shark Week (as well as a personal encounter in Croatia, when I was much younger). But also, funny enough, this fascination was carefully tended over my 10-year tenure working for Discovery Channel as an adult, here in Canada (note that National Geographic also has their own week-long celebration too, entitled Shark Fest).
Each year brought this highlight, in lead-up to our digital rollout for Shark Week. Gradually, as I gained deeper insight, I began to understand and more carefully appreciate how nuanced and critical this species is (they are what’s called an anchor species), and how interlocked our very survival was with theirs. With this mental shift came the push to steer the narrative away from sharks breaching and chomping on anything and everything in sight, and more towards greater (and healthy!) respect for their tenacious ability to survive several mass-extinctions…until now.
Armed with the knowledge that there are in fact more than 400 species, presented me with a vastly varied image from the simplistic Jaws–like monster I was so used to seeing.
This motivated me to lead an interactive project meant to highlight this diversity of sharks (Sharkopedia), as well as to create an interactive map bringing to light just how few and far between unprovoked shark attacks actually were (and by contrast, where in the world, sharks were most in danger from human activity).
It’s a tricky concept to wrap our heads around (an apex predator we depend on), but nonetheless one still worthy of the effort.
As a result, this passion now found a new channel: a lesson meant to do the same for those looking to try a fun activity (a virtual shark dive), learn (or teach) some new concepts (apex predators, and anchor / keystone species), all while sharpening our ability to look at media a bit critically too (Ontario curriculum expectations-aligned as well).
It was only a matter of time before I geeked out on this topic (sorry, not sorry), but this means I’m also happy to expand on anything, should you have any questions or comments. 🤓
sp*rk curiosity 