The next five minutes should focus even more closely on the selected species in the given tide pool.STEP 3: 5 minutes – Field Notes and Drawing.Students should list at least 20 adjectives describing what they observe notes can be recorded on 3x5 index cards. It is VERY IMPORTANT that student get down at the level of the tide pool so that they do not miss out on the cool up-close details. Students should find the tide pool species on which they chose to focus they should spend five minutes quietly observing this species and describing what they notice and considering what questions they may have.Allow students to wander freely through the tide pools, taking in the space as a whole, stopping to look at whatever interests them.STEP 1: 20 minutes – Explore the Surface.Walk through the following steps with students before visiting/viewing tide pools.

Learning to study or “read” a tide pool to understand species more fully.Provide students with a list of tide pool species from which they can choose one for focus.They are home to dozens of different animals and plants living together.

Tide pools are pools of water left behind when the sea water recedes at low tide.

Ask students if anyone has visited a tide pool? Have student(s) describe.

Note: As this is a series of lessons, lesson sequence or timing may need to be adjusted based on the length of class periods.

It can then be applied to any other author’s works as seems appropriate. This series of lessons will teach students how to study and learn from a tide pool and then apply this same methodology to Steinbeck’s writing. Lesson title: Reading Texts as Tide poolsĪs Steinbeck became accustomed to studying tide pools with his good friend and marine biologist Ed Ricketts, he began to write his characters and their surrounding environments as Rickets might have studied an organism and its surrounding organisms and marine environment in a tide pool.Title of text(s): Log from the Sea of Cortez, The Long Valley, Cannery Row.“Everything impinges on everything else.” - John Steinbeck

John steinbeck row