Grade 1 - Animals and Habitats

Animals and Habitats: Supplemental Guide 8A | Animals of the Saltwater Habitat 161

Presenting the Read-Aloud 15 minutes

Animals of the Saltwater Habitat

 Show image 8A-1: Rattenborough in a boat

Welcome to the last habitat that we are going to explore. In the

last read-aloud, we explored freshwater habitats. Now, we’re going

to learn about another kind of water habitat—a saltwater habitat.

Saltwater habitats, as you could guess from their name, contain

lots of salt. This means that we can’t use salt water for drinking.

Would you like to drink a cup of salty water? No thanks!

 Show image 8A-2: Planet Earth

It’s hard to imagine, but more of the earth is covered in water

than is covered with land. Most of that water is salt water in

oceans and seas. Oceans are huge areas of salt water that stretch

all around our planet, and they are home to almost half of the

world’s species of animals and millions of different plants. The

water in the ocean comes from rain as well as from rivers and

streams that fl ow into the ocean. Seas are smaller areas of salt

water that have land around them or around part of them.

 Show image 8A-3: Coastline

I’ve come to the largest ocean, the Pacifi c, to show you a bit

more about ocean habitats and the plants and animals that live in

them.^1 I’m standing on a beach looking out at the water. You can

see that the waves are crashing onto the beach. This beach, and

any land that runs alongside the ocean, is called the coastline,

or shoreline. Now, you may think that when you are standing on

the land looking at the water, that the land stops where the water

starts. It certainly looks that way. But let me get my trusty scuba

gear out and walk into the water.

Now that I’m in here, I’m still standing on land; it’s just that the

land is under the water. The land slopes downward the farther I go

out into the water, which means the water is getting deeper and

deeper.^2

1 [Point to the Pacifi c Ocean on a
world map or globe.]

2 [Visually demonstrate with an
object, such as a wooden incline
block or wedge, or illustrate on the
chalkboard, what the word slopes
means.]