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Buried by Sand: Arguing About a Tide Pool Bench

Grade 7 life science: compare a sand-buried and an unburied tide pool bench over three years to argue how a physical change affected populations.

Grade 7ScienceInteractive · Printable

Aligned toMS-LS2-4

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What’s included

Single worksheet
Auto-graded online
1 NGSS standard
Printable answer key
11 questions
Classroom-ready

Details

Format: Interactive · Printable
Grade: Grade 7
Subject: Science
Question types: Fill in the blank, Multiple choice, Circle the answer, Short answer

About this worksheet

What students practice

Students analyze survey data to describe how sand burial changed several tide pool populations.
Students use a comparison site as evidence to argue that a physical change caused population changes.

How to use

Read the passage aloud, then have students mark which bench was buried before they compare the two tables; use the last question as a written argument.

Curriculum

NGSS standard covered

MS-LS2-4

Argue from evidence that changes to physical or living parts of an ecosystem affect its populations.

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Buried by Sand: Arguing About a Tide Pool Bench

Use three years of field trip surveys to argue how a winter of sand burial changed tide pool populations.

Two benches at Cormorant Point

Read the passage and study both tables. Then answer the questions.

The Winter the Sand Came

1Every May, Ms. Ingrid Solberg's seventh-grade marine biology class from Bayside Middle School takes a field trip to Cormorant Point, a rocky shore beside a long sandy beach. At low tide, two flat rock benches are uncovered. The North bench sits right next to the beach. The South bench is about 300 m away, past a rocky ridge that keeps beach sand from reaching it. Each year, students place square frames on the same marked spots on both benches and record what lives inside them. The tables below come from three years of these class notebooks.

2Mussels cover large patches of both benches. They stay closed at low tide and open at high tide to filter tiny bits of food from the water. Ochre sea stars pry mussels open and eat them. Black turban snails crawl over the rock scraping up thin films of algae and seaweed. Sea anemones cling to the rock in tight clusters, and sea lettuce, a thin green seaweed, grows in bright patches.

3In January 2024, a series of large winter storms piled beach sand onto the North bench. Park rangers measured the sand at 30 to 50 cm deep in places, and it stayed for about four months before spring waves carried most of it back to the beach. When the class arrived in May 2024, the rock was bare again, but it looked very different.

4Students also counted ochre sea stars on each whole bench. On the North bench they found 6 in 2023, 1 in 2024 and 2 in 2025. On the South bench they found 5, 5 and 6.

5The rangers noted that the anemones on the North bench had pulled in their tentacles and closed up under the sand, then opened again once the sand washed away. During the storms, both benches were pounded by the same waves and had the same cold winter water.