The people who are building a huge new aquarium in downtown Toronto have released some exciting new details about it.
Ripley’s Entertainment Corporation – which publishes Ripley’s Believe It Or Not – plans to open the aquarium in 2013. It will be one of the largest aquariums in North America. It will be located near the base of the CN Tower.
More than 13,500 underwater creatures from around the world will be on display at the aquarium. There will be exhibits on jellyfish, seahorses, stingrays, the Great Lakes, tropical reefs and more. The aquarium is designed to be fully interactive.
One of the highlights of the aquarium will be its 96-metre moving walkway through an acrylic tunnel below a shark lagoon, featuring 3-metre-long sand tiger sharks and dozens of other species.
The aquarium will also have an Education and Conservation Program. Experts throughout the aquarium building will answer visitors’ questions and point out interesting facts.
According to Ripley’s website, their goal “is to provide students with a deeper understanding of why it is important to protect and conserve our aquatic environment.”
Learning about aquatic life is important for kids, says Joe Choromanski, Vice-President of Husbandry at Ripley’s Entertainment. “Teaching kids to actually get out into the nature, or into the wild into the environment whether it’s terrestrial, aquatic, or sub-aquatic,” he said. “I think it’s crucial for educators to recognize this.”
Ripley’s Entertainment has invested $97 million into the aquarium along with nearly $10 million from each of the municipal, provincial and federal governments, to build the facility.
CURRICULUM CONNECTIONS
By Jonathan Tilly
Writing/Discussion Prompt
Teachers spend a lot of time thinking about what field trips to take their classes on. A lot of the time, the trips go together with what the students are studying. What subjects and units would go well with a trip to the new aquarium and why?
Reading Prompt: Metacognition
What strategy works best for you when you come to a word or concept that is unfamiliar? What questions do you ask yourself that help you monitor your reading? (OME, Reading: 4.1).
Primary
Identify, initially with some support and direction, what strategies they found most helpful before, during, and after reading and how they can use these and other strategies to improve as readers (OME, Reading: 4.1).
Junior & Intermediate
Identify a range of strategies they found helpful before, during, and after reading and explain, in conversation with the teacher and/or peers or in a reader’s notebook, how they can use these and other strategies to improve as readers (OME, Reading: 4.1).
Grammar Feature: Quotation Marks and Citations
Today’s article includes many quotation marks. At times, quotation marks are used to show a direct quote from a person. For example, the sentence below has quotation marks on either side because it is something that Joe Choromanski said.
“Teaching kids to actually get out into the nature, or into the wild into the environment whether its terrestrial, aquatic, or sub aquatic,” he said.
But today’s article also includes quotation marks around a direct quote from a website!
According to Ripley’s website, their goal “is to provide students with a deeper understanding of why it is important to protect and conserve our aquatic environment.”
Did you know that when a writer includes information in a piece of their writing taken from another text, they must put quotation marks around it? In fact, not using quotation marks in this way is very serious and is called plagiarism. So, always remember to use quotation marks when directly quoting anyone or anything.
See if you can figure out where the quotation marks should go in each sentence below.
1. According to an article on Wikipedia, Stevie Wonder has 10 U.S. number-one hits on the pop charts as well as 20 R&B number one hits, and album sales totaling more than 100 million units.
2. Steven found out on Dr. Roberta Bondar’s web page that her childhood dream to be an astronaut was realized when (she) launched from Earth in January 1992 aboard NASA’s space shuttle Discovery as the first neurologist in space and Canada’s first woman astronaut.
3. Isabella was checking out The Hockey Hall of Fame website when she discovered, Iginla’s biggest thrill during the 2001-02 season was being named to Canada’s Olympic Team and winning a gold medal at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.
