Grade 6-8

The students will create their own laws and legal consequences concerning marine debris and identify the litter laws and legal consequences of litter in their own state.

Students will review and analyze a data set from a local marine debris cleanup. After drawing conclusions about the data, they will use it as evidence for a campaign to prevent marine debris.

Simple upcycling activity making a fish mobile out of aluminum cans.

Simple maze activity featuring a fish and a recycling bin.

Brief reading passage focused on ways to prevent marine debris (reduce/reuse/recycle).

Team-building/active activity where students use verbal directions to guide blindfolded classmates through an obstacle course, simulating navigation around abandoned and derelict vessels.

Research-based role-playing activity where students identify and investigate stakeholders on the issue of abandoned and derelict vessels.

Brief reading about the risks and solutions of abandoned and derelict vessels, including an anecdote about locating and removing vessels in Georgia.

Reading and accompanying activity about the importance and challenges faced by diamondback terrapins.

Reading and activity exploring the impacts of derelict fishing gear on whales and other marine mammals. 

Rubber band entanglement exercise simulating the impacts of marine debris entanglement on marine animals' comfort and ability to feed.

Experiment comparing the breaking points of several weights of fishing line.

Introductory reading on the sources and impacts of derelict fishing gear.

A listening exercise where students predict and act out the movement of litter from a stream, through a watershed, into the ocean.

A listening and matching game where students connect descriptions of debris to the debris type.