Grade 6-8

Trash Tale is a fill-in the blank, "Mad Libs"-style activity telling the story of a piece of trash that ends up in the environment and what happens to it along the way.

Students use a graphic organizer to review existing solutions to microplastic marine debris, and brainstorm feasible, actionable solutions to microplastics. They discuss challenges to implementing solutions.

Students synthesize what they have learned about marine debris and incorporate their knowledge into a presentation or display that helps others both 1) understand the problem and 2) take actions that contribute to solving the problem.

Students learn about community organizations and what actions they are taking to reduce marine debris. Students then can organize a cleanup of the school campus, a local waterway or beach, or join another community cleanup project. This activity is available for Grades 4-5, 6-8, and 9-12, within the "Solutions" unit. 

Students engineer an artistic and sturdy item from single-use plastics that might otherwise end up in landfills or as marine debris, effectively removing these plastics from the waste stream. This activity is available for Grades 4-5, 6-8, and 9-12, within the "Solutions" unit. 

Student "Green Teams" analyze school waste, work with school and community partners to reduce, reuse and recycle materials, and set goals to make a difference locally and globally. This activity is available for Grades 4-5, 6-8, and 9-12, within the "Solutions" unit. 

Students use scientific models as a tool to evaluate the many kinds of risk tsunami marine debris poses. They then explore the risk posed by live organisms that have colonized tsunami marine debris.

Plastic pellets (also called “nurdles”) are small pre-production pieces that are shipped around the world to factories that melt them to produce a variety of products. Pellets are often lost during transit, and because they float can be found throughout the ocean and on beaches everywhere.

Students use photographs of regurgitated albatross boluses to perform a “virtual dissection” and analysis, comparing the amounts of prey and non-prey items found in several boluses. They then use what they have learned to create a model of a bolus, with which they can educate others. This activity is available for Grades 6-8 and 9-12, within the "Impacts" unit. 

Students relate the location of plastics in the water column to the feeding behavior of various marine organisms. They discuss how marine debris can cause problems for different animals inhabiting a variety of ocean depths.

Students learn about at least two possible impacts of microplastics on the marine environment. They calculate the surface area of rectangular prisms of various sizes and create an argument that the greater surface area of small plastic pieces can potentially accumulate more toxins.

Students extract microplastic beads from personal care products, explore ways microplastics get into the ocean, and learn about a researcher who studies microplastics. This activity is available for Grades 6-8, within the "Sources and Transport" unit. 

Students construct models of ocean surface currents and winds to explain the dispersal of Japanese Tsunami Marine Debris (JTMD). Then they compare their model to those generated by researchers.

Students use a model to test how air movement affects water movement, and devise a hypothesis about how the direction of air currents affect the movement of ocean surface currents and floating objects. This activity is available for Grades 6-8 and 9-12, within the "Sources and Transport" unit. 

Students read a true story about bath toys that fell off a container ship and washed up on beaches around the world. Using a world map, they locate and record the dates and places where the toys were eventually found.