Explorers Fin-tastic Sharks+ Resources

Wow! There are so many shark topics - where do you begin? The Explorers Fin-Tastic Sharks+ Teachers Planning Guide provides teachers with a quick reference guide and links to educational resources that can be used for teaching children about sharks, skates and rays in Ireland and around the world.

The resources focus on providing ideas for citizen science projects as well as lots of STEM and creative lessons and activities to develop their competencies and skills.

The Explorers Fin-Tastic Sharks+ An Introduction to Elasmobranchs for Children is the perfect book to use for a variety of projects throughout the school year. Children can learn about their favourite sharks, skates and rays in Irish waters and around the world. The book provides an introduction to sharks from the past; sharks, skates and rays body parts; their superpowers and adaptations, as well as mermaids purses and pups.

It also highlights the threats facing sharks, skates and rays species, as well as highlights how scientists and communities are helping & protecting sharks, skates and rays in Ireland and around the world.

This book is full of photos, fun facts and illustrations to help inspire teachers and children to learn about these incredible creatures as well as engaging in learning about the ocean.

The Explorers Fin-Tastic Sharks+ My Elasmobranchs Workbook provides 14 cross curricular lesson activities and worksheets, where children can learn about sharks, skates and rays in Irish waters and around the world.

Children can develop their competencies and skills including learning to be a learner researching fun facts about sharks, skates and rays. This can extended with completing STEM activities by designing and producing a shark-in-the-box facts game.

There are a range of creative ideas including making a tote bag (from a recycled t-shirt) to share with others new fun shark words such as viviparous, ovovipvparous, oviparous and parthenogenesis… to name a few. The workbook also provides templates for encouraging children to be an active citizen producing a ‘sharks are good for me, posters and create a post-card community campaign to inform their family and friends about sharks, skates and rays.

There are also fun maths activities learning about sharks sizes to how high they can breach the water. The work book also provides templates and activities to learn how to identify mermaid’s purses, creating a shark fossil, producing infographic posters, to writing a song about a Meg’s lost tooth, and lots more.

The Explorers My Fin-Tastic Sharks+ Theme Park planning and design worksheet is an excellent resource where children can work individually or as teams on a project creating a shark theme park.

The theme park planning and design worksheet prompts children to use the Explorers Fin-Tastic Sharks+ An Introduction to Elasmobranchs for Children as a guide to help them design their theme park rides. Consider encouraging the children to create an interactive rides or park experiences based on each chapter in the book to engage others learning more about sharks, skates and rays.

The project also encourages children to research the different types of theme park rides and experiences that exist around the world, and to consider what type of rides they would create to develop a sustainable clean blue park.

The worksheet also recommends extended activities including creative arts producing a model of the park using recycled items, creating STEM 3D models of their theme park rides, to using their IT skills and developing a fantastic ‘fin-tastic theme park’ using online tools such as Mimecraft.

The Explorers My Fin-Tastic Sharks Creative Design Book is an excellent resource for teachers and children to use for creative art projects. The design book has over 20 pictures of shark species including a selection of the largest, medium and smallest shark species in the world. Each page is dedicated to a specific shark which children can colour or use fabric & fibres to create a shark collage.

The Explorers Fin-Tastic Sharks+ An Introduction to Elasmobranchs Class Presentation can be used to inspire shark stories with the class. The presentation can be used to focus on different topics, such as sharks around the world; sharks, skates & rays in Ireland; sharks from the past; to learning about their superpowers. The presentation also includes extra content about caring and conservation of sharks species, plus lots more.

Did you know that ALL SKATES and SOME SHARKS reproduce by laying egg cases. These are called MERMAID’S PURSES!

The Explorers Fin-Tastic Sharks+ Pups and Mermaid's Purses Class Presentation provides an introduction to the different ways sharks, skates and rays reproduce. Children get to learn new shark words, as well as identifying sharks and skate egg cases. Child also learn how to find shark and skate cases on the shore, identify them using the Explorers Mermaid’s Identification Key, and practice becoming citizen scientists by downloading the data they have collected.

The Explorers Fin-tastic Sharks+ Mermaid's Purse Identification Key (438mm x 310mm) is an excellent resource where teachers and children can use to identify shark and skate egg cases found on the shoreline. The key provides ten of the most popular egg cases of skates and sharks found on the seashore in Ireland. It is colour-coded to help children to work out the species cases based on the cases size, colour, shape and special features. Images of the adult species and links to citizen science projects are also provided, encouraging children to register data collected about the mermaid's purses they have found. The key can be printed on an A3 sheet and trimmed to size.

The Explorers Shark from Around the World Poster provides illustrations of over twenty sharks found in the ocean around the world. Information about the sharks includes the adult sharks scientific name, length, weight, life expectancy, depth it swims, and the IUCN status.

This graphic is also available as a landscape version and can be used as a PowerPoint slide or on a Whiteboard.