7 Ways to explore the ocean with your students this World Ocean Day

Why World Ocean Day matters in the classroom

World Ocean Day, celebrated on June 8, is a global invitation to honor our shared ocean and take collective action to protect it. For teachers, it’s also a perfect opportunity to bring science, geography, and environmental stewardship into sharp focus across every grade level.

Here’s the thing: the ocean covers more than 70% of our planet, yet we’ve explored less of the deep sea than the surface of Mars. That gap between what we know and what remains undiscovered makes ocean science one of the most naturally engaging topics you’ll find. Students don’t need much convincing to care about sea turtles, coral reefs, or the strange creatures lurking on the ocean floor.

Whether you teach 3rd graders or high school seniors, World Ocean Day gives you a ready-made hook to build cross-curricular lessons around real-world problems. The seven activities below draw on ClickView’s World Ocean Day and World Oceans Day topic collections, along with the high school Oceans topic, so every activity comes paired with curriculum-aligned video resources your students are ready to watch.

7 activities to celebrate World Ocean Day with your students

1) Uncover ocean mysteries with a wonder wall

How much do your students actually know about the ocean? This activity taps into natural curiosity and sets the tone for deeper ocean exploration throughout the week.

Best for: Elementary and middle school (adaptable for high school)

What you’ll need: Sticky notes or a digital collaboration board, plus access to ClickView videos

How it works:

• Start by asking students to write down one thing they know about the ocean and one thing they’d like to know. Post these on a shared “wonder wall.”
• Watch 7 Things We Don’t Know About the Ocean from the SciShow series. This 10-minute video is available across the elementary, middle school, and high school libraries, so it works regardless of your grade level.
• After watching, have students revisit the wonder wall. Which questions were answered? Which remain open? Add new questions that the video sparked.
• For middle schoolers, follow up with How Big Is the Ocean? from Earth School to build on the sense of scale.

Discussion prompt: If scientists have only explored about 5% of the ocean, what do you think we might find in the other 95%? Why should we explore the other 95%?

2) Investigate ocean ecosystems and marine habitats

The ocean isn’t one uniform body of water. It’s a network of wildly different ecosystems, each with its own set of species, temperatures, and conditions. This activity helps students understand diversity by exploring specific marine habitats through video and guided research.

Best for: Middle and high school (a simplified version can work for upper elementary)

What you’ll need: Access to ClickView videos, research materials, and poster or slide presentation tools

How it works:

• Divide students into small groups and assign each group a marine habitat to investigate: the deep seafloor, coral reefs, open ocean, or kelp forests.
• Have groups watch one or two short ClickView clips related to their habitat. Good options include Sea Floor Life from the Atlantic: Wildest Ocean on Earth series and The Life Hydrologic (Marine Habitats) from Crash Course Kids.
• For high school students, add The Sunlit Zone from Life in the Sea and Kelp and Invertebrates from Planet Earth: Shallow Seas for a more detailed look at ocean zones and biodiversity.
• Each group creates a short presentation (poster, digital slides, or a one-minute “pitch”) explaining what makes their habitat unique, what species live there, and what threats it faces.
• Groups present to the class, and students identify connections between the different habitats.

Discussion prompt: If one ocean habitat disappears, how might that affect the others?

3) Map ocean currents and their global impact

Ocean currents are invisible highways that shape weather, move nutrients, and even carry pollution across the globe. This activity makes those invisible forces visible and connects physical science to geography and climate.

Best for: Middle and high school

What you’ll need: World maps (physical or digital), colored markers or string, and access to ClickView

How it works:

• Begin with the BBC Bitesize: Explainers – Oceans clip (two minutes) to give students a quick visual overview of how oceans work.
• For middle schoolers, follow up with Oceans of the World: Currents, The Gulf Stream, and Climate Change from Science Kids. This 22-minute video covers currents, the Gulf Stream, and their connection to climate patterns.
• For high school students, use How Do Oceans Circulate? from Crash Course Geography, which follows the journey of a discarded water bottle caught in the North Pacific Garbage Patch to explain both surface and deep-water currents.
• After watching, have students trace major ocean currents on a world map using colored markers or string. Label the currents and annotate how each one influences the climate of nearby coastal regions.
• Extend the activity by asking students to predict where ocean trash from their nearest coastline might end up, based on current patterns.

Discussion prompt: Why do you think a current on one side of the Atlantic affects the weather on the other side?

4) Hold a water pollution investigation

Pollution is one of the biggest threats facing our ocean, and it’s a topic students feel strongly about once they understand the scope. This activity turns that concern into structured investigation and critical thinking.

Best for: Elementary and middle school

What you’ll need: Access to ClickView videos, research materials, and a simple graphic organizer for note-taking

How it works:

• Set up “investigation stations,” each focused on a different type of ocean pollution: chemical runoff, sewage, oil spills, and agricultural waste.
• At each station, provide a short ClickView video as the primary source. Strong options include Sea Pollution from Let’s Discover: Sustainability and Climate Change (one minute, great for younger students), Water Pollution from Pollution of Air and Water, and Wastewater and Sewage from the same series.
• Students rotate through stations in small groups, watching the clip and recording key findings on a graphic organizer: What is this type of pollution? Where does it come from? What does it affect?
• Regroup as a class and have each team share their findings. Together, rank the pollution types by severity or by how solvable they are.

Discussion prompt: Which type of ocean pollution do you think is the hardest to fix, and why?

5) Take on the plastic problem

Plastic pollution in the ocean is one of the most visible and accessible environmental issues for students of all ages. This activity moves beyond awareness into solution-oriented thinking, which is exactly the kind of problem-solving skill that translates across subjects.

Best for: Elementary and middle school (with high school extension)

What you’ll need: Access to ClickView videos, materials for a mini design challenge (recycled materials, paper, tape, markers)

How it works:

• Start with Plastic Problem from BBC Bitesize: The Regenerators – Poetry (two minutes). This short, creative clip frames the plastic issue through poetry, making it a natural cross-curricular tie to English Language Arts.
• Follow up with Plastics and the Environment from Synthetic Fibers and Plastics for a more scientific look at how plastic interacts with ocean ecosystems, and The History of Plastic from Miniclips for context on how we got here.
• Show Innovative Solutions for Ocean Plastic Cleanup from the Planet Bonehead: Ocean Plastic series to introduce real-world solutions and inspire creative thinking.
• Challenge students to design their own solution. Using recycled materials, each group creates a prototype or poster for a device, system, or campaign that reduces plastic entering the ocean. Give them 20 to 30 minutes, then hold a “pitch session” where groups present their ideas.
• For a lighter touch with younger students, play the Hey No More Ocean Plastic music video from Planet Bonehead and have them create their own anti-plastic pledge or song.

6) Launch a coral reef and sea turtle conservation campaign

Coral reefs support roughly 25% of all marine species, yet they’re among the most threatened ecosystems on Earth. Pair that with the plight of sea turtles, and you’ve got a topic students connect with emotionally and scientifically.

Best for: Elementary and middle school

What you’ll need: Access to ClickView videos, art supplies or digital design tools for campaign materials

How it works:

• Begin with a virtual reef tour using clips from the ClickView library. Check Out the Great Barrier Reef from SciShow Kids (four minutes) works well for elementary and early middle school. For a more detailed look, use Reef Residents from Nature’s Microworlds: Great Barrier Reef and Barrier Reef from Planet Earth: Shallow Seas.
• Introduce the connection between plastic pollution and marine life with Connecting the Dots: Sea Turtles and Ecosystem Balance from the Planet Bonehead: Ocean Plastic series. This five-minute video unpacks how plastic pollution disrupts the balance of ocean ecosystems, with sea turtles as a focal point.
• Students work in pairs or small groups to create a conservation campaign. They choose either coral reefs or sea turtles and design a poster, social media post, or short script for a public service announcement. Each campaign piece needs to include at least two facts from the videos and one clear call to action.
• Display the campaigns in the hallway or school common area for World Ocean Day, or share them digitally on the school’s website or morning announcements.

7) Connect the ocean to global sustainability goals

This activity zooms out from specific ocean issues to the bigger picture: how protecting the ocean fits into the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It’s a strong way to wrap up a World Ocean Day unit because it ties everything together and gives students a framework for thinking about long-term change.

Best for: Middle and high school

What you’ll need: Access to ClickView videos, SDG reference materials (available free from the UN website)

How it works:

• Watch Goal 14: Life Below Water from the UN Sustainable Development Goals series on ClickView (four minutes). This clip outlines the specific targets for protecting marine life and ocean resources.
• After the video, have students identify which of the previous activities in this unit (pollution investigation, plastic design challenge, conservation campaigns) connect to Goal 14’s targets. Create a class map linking classroom work to real-world sustainability goals.
• For high school students, extend the conversation to ocean warming and its global consequences using Warming Oceans from DK Eyewitness: Climate Change and How the Oceans Respond to Global Warming from Earth: The Power of the Planet. Ask students to research one specific SDG 14 target and write a short policy brief or proposal outlining what their community could do to contribute.
• For a more reflective and creative option, screen the film Blueback (one hour 43 minutes, rated TV-PG), available on ClickView. Based on Tim Winton’s novella, it tells the story of a marine biologist and her mother’s lifelong commitment to protecting the ocean. Use it as a springboard for journal writing or a class discussion about personal responsibility and environmental activism.

Tips for weaving ocean learning into your everyday teaching

World Ocean Day falls on June 8, but the topics it raises don’t have to be confined to a single lesson or week. Here are some ways to keep ocean learning alive throughout the year:

• Connect to current events. When ocean-related news breaks, whether it’s a coral bleaching event, a new deep-sea discovery, or a policy change around marine protected areas, take five minutes to discuss it as a class. The ClickView World Oceans Day topic page is regularly updated with new video resources you can pull from quickly.
• Build cross-curricular bridges. Ocean topics naturally connect to science, geography, math (data on ocean temperatures, plastic waste statistics), English Language Arts (persuasive writing, poetry, documentary analysis), and art (campaign design, illustration). Look for those connections when planning units in other subjects.
• Use video as a warm-up. A two-minute ClickView clip at the start of a lesson sets context and activates prior knowledge. Short clips like the BBC Bitesize: Explainers – Oceans video or Where Does One Ocean End And Another Begin? from MinuteEarth are ideal for this.
• Revisit and reflect. If you run several of these activities across the week, close the unit by having students revisit their original wonder wall from Activity 1. How has their understanding of the ocean changed? What new questions do they have? That reflection loop helps solidify learning and models the kind of ongoing inquiry that good science depends on.

The ocean is vast, and so are the teaching possibilities it offers. Whether your students are creating conservation posters or analyzing global circulation patterns, World Ocean Day gives you a meaningful reason to dive in.

Sources

1. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). “Ocean.” Available at: https://www.noaa.gov/ocean
2. United Nations. “World Oceans Day, 8 June.” Available at: https://www.un.org/en/observances/oceans-day
3. United Nations. “Goal 14: Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources.” Available at: https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal14
4. World Ocean Day. “About World Ocean Day.” Available at: https://worldoceanday.org