Graphing Ocean Tides Activity

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Students generate a graph to discover the patterns in tides and how they relate to the moon. They’ll gain a deeper understanding of the relationship between the moon and tides.

Lesson Outline:

1. PRACTICE using a tide chart. This familiarizes kids with reading and working with a tide chart.
2. GRAPH the tide chart data for one month. We find it helpful to make groups of three, so each student only graphs one-third of the data. Students combine their graphs to make one long tide graph.
3. WORK UP the graph by adding neap and spring tide labels and moon phases.
4. ANSWER follow-up analysis questions.

Please note: If you would like to have your students practice reading a tide chart without the graphing part, we also off this Reading a Tide Chart Worksheet.

Provided Documents:

• Using a Tide Chart worksheet
• Daily Tide Chart (1 page – make one class set and REUSE)
• Tide Graph Analysis
• Tide Graph Blank

Teacher Notes:

• ANSWER KEY INCLUDED.
• Please note that this resource is not editable.
• NGSS Standards Covered: MS-ESS1-2, MS-PS2-4, HS-ESS1-4
• NGSS Science & Engineering Practice: Analyzing and interpreting data
• NGSS Science & Engineering Practice: Using mathematics and computational thinking
• Check out more resources in the moon and tides section of our shop!