World Ocean Day for Schools 2021

We took a new approach this year - taking on board feedback from last year’s participants. We extended beyond running live events on just one day, and hosted assemblies and activities over four days (from Tuesday 8th June to Friday 11th June).

Each day focused on one specific challenge and was hosted by one of our partners. We co-designed workshops with our partners and our extended We are Ocean network.

The flow of the day followed the World Ocean Day for Schools ethos (head, heart, hands) - starting with live assemblies, hosted by Lizzie Daly, and then offering up a number of learning opportunities aligned with the days challenge and finishing off the day with an invitation for schools to create a blue space that enables ocean connection and blue mind experiences.

We built a toolkit for teachers giving them the opportunity to plan their week as well as connecting them to our partners and offering up a template letter to suggest to their headteacher if their school can take part.

One key focus this year was in helping schools create a blue space - somewhere at school to feel connected to the ocean. That looks different for everyone - but we wanted to ensure teachers had some basic guidelines as a starting point, so we mapped out five simple steps & created a downloadable PDF.

We partnered with Encounter Education again this year to host live sessions throughout the week via their platform. Year on year we add all World Ocean Day for Schools workshops to our website - we’ve now got 134 ocean resources in our directory. 2021 saw the addition of numerous resources in French, Spanish & German.

On World Ocean Day, Stephen King represented World Ocean Day for Schools at the Global Goals Pavilion in the Forest for Change at Somerset House, London. His interview featured in the Global Goal short film for the Finisterre event Sea7., where World Ocean Day for Schools was recognised as one of the leading ocean focused educational events..