World Ocean Day 2020

As a school, we are continually working towards supporting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which have been set by the United Nations. Worldwide, 193 countries have all agreed to work together to find ways to support the world's fragile ecosystems and humanity. Altogether there are 17 goals. Friday was World Ocean Day - this supports SDG 14, Life Below Water. Every child across the school took part in activities learning about the oceans and how to protect marine life. Watch this link to see how ocean bins are being used worldwide

We talked about how important it is to look after our oceans especially in respect of the amount of plastic used and found in our seas, endangering our sea life. Our children followed the yoga and meditation video that took us on a journey below the sea and as you can see the children followed the yoga instructions superbly.

In EYFS we celebrated world ocean day by discussing the different ways that litter impacts the oceans and where it can end up. We then looked at the different ocean hero's and the ways in which these people and children have helped to save our oceans. The children then created their own poster explaining who their ocean hero is and why. We also learnt about the importance of looking after our oceans by reducing our plastic use and using alternatives to plastic.

This week we have been thinking about how to look after our oceans. We have been thinking about how we can reuse our rubbish especially plastic and make better use of it as we were not happy about finding out that people's rubbish can often find its way to the oceans which can cause harm to the sealife.

With our recycling, we decided to create some art work to remind ourselves to always recycle what we can.  We learnt about the ocean bins that collect floating rubbish from the surface of the water. Did you know that Bristol is the first dock in the UK to have an ocean bin installed? We were horrified to learn that 731 tonnes of plastic are dumped into the Mediterranean Sea EVERY DAY, this fact really made the children think, especially as a lot of our children have swam in the Mediterranean Sea on holiday. We then used the ipads to learn about marine life around the UK shores - next time you visit a UK beach, look out for evidence of lugworms! For the last 15 minutes, we watched part of Blue Planet 2 - the children were totally mesmerized by what they saw and have asked if we can watch more next week. 

The children discussed what we can do to protect the oceans. As part of our Science learning, we have looked at how electricity is made. The children were shocked that fossil fuels are still used as these cause so much pollution and are non-renewable.

We spent some time evaluating our plastic usage and how we can reduce this in order to help protect our oceans and marine life. The children were moved by some troubling images illustrating the impact plastic is having on the lives of animals and our beach environments.

The children created questions to discuss based on a visual stimulus (a coastline completely covered by man-made waste). The children voted for their favourite question, which was, 'What can we do to solve this problem and stop it happening?'. They came up with a range of good ideas, from increasing the cost of plastic bags to using non-plastic materials for everyday use.