Blue Schools STEAM Curriculum and Ocean STEM Activities
Ocean Blue Project (OBP)’s Blue Schools STREAM Education features STEAM Curriculum and Ocean STEM Activities to empower our youngest generations – to understand the connection between the watershed under their feet, their drinking water, and the ocean we all share. Through the innovative OBP Blue Schools STREAM Education, students acquire skills through:Â
- Science
- Technology
- Reading and Writing
- Engineering
- Arts
- MathÂ
All integrated with at-home and in-class curriculum, OBP Blue is designed to deliver easily in any setting. OBP Blue Schools STREAM Education unites students and communities to become stewards of our beaches, streams, rivers, watersheds, and our One World Ocean.Â
Ocean Blue Project developed the ecology-based curriculum in collaboration with:Â
- U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)Â
- National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association’s (NOAA) – Meaningful Watershed Educational Experiences (MWEEs).Â
- United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)
In 2022, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) recognized OBP Blue Schools as one of 150 Green Citizens Projects for being innovative, impactful, and replicable. Ocean Blue Project strives to see OBP Blue Schools integrated into every K-12 classroom in the United States by 2030. OBP Blue Schools follows Next Generation Science and National Core Arts Standards.Â
What does STEAM stand for?
STEAM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math. The main difference between STREAM and STEM is that STREAM includes two additional components: Reading and Writing and the Arts, in addition to Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics.
While STEM focuses on science and math, STREAM broadens the framework by integrating reading and writing to improve literacy skills and the arts to stimulate creativity and innovation. This holistic approach ensures a more comprehensive educational experience, providing students with a broader range of skills and knowledge and the critical thinking needed for inheriting a world with big problems to solve.
Through Transformative STEAM Curriculum and Ocean Science Activities, students are better prepared to understand and solve complex, real-world problems from a well-rounded perspective. To take the program one step further, Ocean Blue includes Reading and Writing in OBP Blue Schools STREAM Education.
Blue Schools Next Generation Science Standards and MWEEs
The OBP Blue Schools STEAM curriculum and Ocean STEM Activities adhere to the Next Generation Science Standards and NOAA’s Meaningful Watershed Educational Experiences (MWEEs). The Next Generation Science Standards are a comprehensive set of K-12 science content standards. These standards are esteemed STEM learning benchmarks that revolve around core concepts and are integrated across various disciplines, including science and engineering practices tailored for each grade level from K-12.
So, what does MWEE stand for? MWEEs are science-based activities that increase participants’ environmental literacy and highlight the connection between human activity and environmental conditions. Schools can customize the content to meet individual classrooms, communities, and watersheds’ unique needs. The program also helps diverse and marginalized students, including those in Title 1 schools, to make a powerful impact on their environment. By providing these experiences, or MWEEs as we call them, OBP Blue Schools’ environmental education programs offer many benefits to students and communities.
OBP Blue Schools Student Benefits
- Hands-on experiential learning and leadership
- Integrated arts, science, and technology education
- Skills and knowledge for college and career
- Content developed by environmental experts
OBP Blue Schools Teacher + Community Benefits
- Family + Community Engagement Opportunities
- Beautification of the community environment
- Protection and restoration of local watersheds
- Enhanced wellness and quality of life
- Continuing Education Units or Clock Hours for teachers in most states
OBP Blue Schools Environmental Activities for Students
The OBP Blue Schools STEAM Curriculum and Ocean STEM Activities provides environmental activities for students. OBP Blue Schools curriculum is available to public and private K-12 schools, leadership groups, youth organizations such as 4H and scout troops, homeschoolers, and more.
All educators and youth organization leaders are welcome to apply for participation in the OBP Blue Schools program. Scholarships are available for Title 1 school classrooms. OBP Blue Schools STREAM Education contains four key components:
School Spotlight
OBP Blue Schools and Rashi School
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“Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your beautiful collaboration with us for this year’s Rashi TamChui Project! From the moment we reached out to you to tell you that the Rashi School chose Ocean Blue Project as one of our six non-profits to learn about and support this year – you were all in – so excited and gracious and generous with your time – your expertise and desire to be as inspiring and helpful to our students as possible.
The 6th graders felt your passion (they were right there with you!!!) and learned a lot from you so they could teach our youngest students about being environmental stewards for our One World Ocean! Although you could not be with us in person, you were able to be an inspiring and engaging teacher virtually to our students and empower them to understand that they have an opportunity and responsibility to take the lead and protect and care for the ocean. Your personal stories were wonderful, especially about how you got interested in this work so long ago and what keeps you passionate today.”
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With appreciation and love,Â
Steph, Sherman, and the Rashi School
Through OBP Blue Schools grade level-appropriate, inquiry-based discussion and activities, students discover the importance of their local watershed through STEM Curriculum Kits for classroom or distance learning, including arts and Ocean STEM Activities. Our traditional STEM activities can be customized to include the arts, depending on student needs.Â
OBP Blue Schools STEAM curriculum educates students about the pollutants that can contaminate local drinking water and wildlife habitats. Students learn how ocean organisms provide over half of the world’s oxygen supply and are the primary protein source for approximately three billion people. They make a holistic connection between their environment and the long-term health of the local water supply, ecosystems, wildlife, and our interconnected One World Ocean.Â
Each lesson integrates Next Generation Science Standards. Students focus on questions, investigate problems, collect, analyze, and share data, learn protocols, explore models, examine natural phenomena, and develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills. K-5 students may focus on helping save endangered animals, while grade 6-12 students engage in critical thinking and problem solving and create pledges to improve local watersheds. OBP Blue Schools STEM Curriculum Kits and OBP Blue Schools STEAM Curriculum are tailored to local needs—in classrooms, in person, or via distance learning, at home, or online at school.
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Why are watersheds critical?
Watersheds provide essential resources like drinking water, fisheries, and wildlife habitat, making them vital to our environment and economy. Healthy watersheds are crucial for maintaining our groundwater, streams, creeks, tributaries and rivers, ponds, lakes, and, ultimately, our One World Ocean. Pollution from various sources can contaminate our watersheds, affecting our drinking water and the ocean. Forest fires and severe storms can worsen pollution entering our watersheds, harming wildlife and people.
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How does a watershed impact your daily life?
Watersheds are anywhere we live, work, and play and are a vital part of our daily lives. Watersheds provide drinking water, food, and all the land we can’t see underneath the buildings and roads we build. Unhealthy watersheds negatively impact wildlife and humans. Polluted runoff water harms people and animals and can carry soil and sediment into streams and rivers, causing erosion. Erosion can happen quickly during flash floods or heavy rainfall. If your home is alongside a river, this erosion could mean losing your backyard. It also means more polluted sediment where fish live and fewer healthy fish that feed an entire food web, including us.
OBP Blue Schools’ curriculum includes hands-on scientific hypothesis testing and participation in outdoor education activities. Children and young adults learn and act to protect watersheds and become active environmental stewards both on and off school grounds. The Project-Based Learning (PBL) activities are grounded in best practices and their community and cultural context. They are designed to increase student interest, motivation, and environmental stewardship.Â
Fun outdoor education activities connect students to water and nature and teach them that they can make a difference in their communities. OBP Blue Schools Stewardship Action Projects also help restore habitat ecosystems where wildlife, plants, and humans can thrive.Â
Around reservoirs or rivers, creeks, or urban streams, students clean up, test water, plant native species of shrubs and trees to help feed birds and ducks, or provide shade for fish species, including trout and salmon. They introduce fungi to enhance microorganisms in the soil. OBP Blue Schools students remove plastic and trash to clean parks, drains, parking lots, bays, and beaches. They raise funds to protect wildlife. Through outdoor education activities, students learn to connect the long-term health of their local water supply with wildlife and our One World Ocean.Â
Why is it important to learn about ocean pollution?
Oceans are home to millions of marine species, cover more than 70 percent of the planet, and contain about 97 percent of Earth’s water. Freshwater lakes, streams, rivers, icecaps, and other water bodies interconnect with our One World Ocean.Â
Keeping oceans clean means removing plastic, cleaning up beaches, and planting trees and fungi near watersheds to help filter out pollutants before they reach the sea. Educating about how ocean pollution affects everyone and raising awareness among students and the next generation can prevent dead zones and red tides in the ocean. Â
Ocean Blue Project unites children, parents, university students, and marginalized and economically disadvantaged students with local community members through Community Integration Activities.
OBP Blue Schools students—from elementary to college level—participate in service-learning projects along with volunteers and others from local governments, agencies, businesses, organizations, and parent guardians.Â
Why should we stop ocean pollution?Â
Plastic harms the ocean and our drinking water. Millions of tons of plastic waste escape into oceans each year. Marine life ingests or gets caught in plastic bags, pieces of plastic bottles, or packaging. Plastic debris breaks down into tiny pieces or microplastics, even found in water consumed by humans. Students learn the importance of recycling, upcycling plastic packaging, and eliminating single-use bottles, plastic utensils, and straws.
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Cleanup efforts unite Ocean Blue Project volunteers, schools, universities, businesses, and communities to help recover microplastics and reduce systemic plastic pollution. OBP Blue Schools turns otherwise landfill-bound debris into a teaching experience. Through these projects, we can collectively make our planet a better place and provide Ocean STEM Activities with memories to last a lifetime.
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OBP Blue Schools STEAM curriculum provides students with opportunities for reflection, encouragement, and inspiration to be leaders in continued environmental stewardship efforts. Outcomes are measured through students’ synthesis presentations, science inquiry skills, science and arts engagement, environmental stewardship, and watershed literacy. Surveys implemented throughout mini-engagement activities serve as both learning experiences and assessments.Â
Students learn the relationships between watersheds, natural systems, wildlife, plants, and water cycles with social systems, communities, and schools. Teachers are encouraged to display projects by K-5 students at parent conferences and to arrange for 6-12 students to present projects, plays, and visual displays to the entire school. Since lesson plans and timelines are customized for each teacher, their feedback is incorporated into the program’s expansion. Students acquire critical knowledge to protect our streams, lakes, rivers, beaches, wildlife habitats, and oceans. We can save our One World Ocean by empowering future youth stewards.
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How does environmental education help students?
Studies show that students participating in Project-Based Learning and Environmental Education, mainly through Meaningful Watershed Educational Experiences (MWEEs), score higher on standardized tests and are better prepared for the future. Beyond this academic achievement, students, teachers, and families develop a heightened appreciation of their environment and learn how to reduce pollution and plastic waste.Â
OBP Blue Schools, adhering to Next Generation Science Standards and NOAA’s MWEE framework, has helped numerous students, families, and communities take ownership of their watersheds, drinking water, and broader environments. Through MWEEs, students have removed plastics from beaches and bays, planted native species to restore soil, creeks, and estuaries, tested water, and advocated for endangered marine life
The cost to participate in OBP Blue Schools is normally $350, but Ocean Blue Project has helped teachers obtain scholarships at Title 1 and other schools. Educators can customize the STEAM curriculum to your classroom schedule and lesson plans.
Ideally, your chosen timeline engages students throughout the school year with outdoor education activities at a site location near you during different seasons. These experiences help connect students to water and nature. However, schools can shorten curriculum timelines to be sustainable for the educator and classroom.
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OBP Blue Schools and Ocean STEM Activities for Teachers
Suppose you are looking for simple and fun Ocean STEM activities for the classroom or outdoor learning environment. You may need more time to be ready to introduce the OBP Blue Schools STEAM curriculum to your students. In that case, you will find some downloads and curriculum for purchase below. Purchasing materials here supports the OBP Blue Schools program by providing the OBP Blue Schools STEAM curriculum to students in Title 1 schools at no cost.Â
All educators are encouraged to apply for the OBP Blue Schools STREAM Education Program to gain the meaningful watershed educational experience that OBP Blue Schools offers and opportunity for Continuing Education Units or Clock Hours for teachers.Â
STEM Activities for Preschoolers By examining kits with plastics, styrofoam, and rope found washed up on beaches, even the youngest students develop hands-on skills in observation, math, and science. They also learn how reducing plastic debris will protect our oceans, wildlife, and future generations. Â
Ocean Activities for Kindergarten to 2nd Grade At this stage, students gain fundamental environmental awareness with hands-on ocean debris science kits and practice creative expression as they grasp the relationships between the water cycle, rainfall, watersheds, rivers, mountains, and basins and how each of us can make a positive difference for the ocean right from our own neighborhood.Â
Ocean Debris Science Kit Kits contain one pound of ocean plastic in micro, small, and large sizes, marine debris rope, prepared ocean activities, and downloadable ocean current maps. They inspire students of all ages to observe and discuss the effects of plastic on our watersheds, marine wildlife, and oceans.Â
STREAM Education for Kindergarten to 12th Grade This customizable curriculum includes a one-on-one session to customize your curriculum, including slideshows, lesson plans, stewardship, and outdoor education activities to build solid foundational knowledge and enhanced environmental awareness of local watersheds, clean drinking water, and marine ecosystems. Students acquire leadership, science, technology, engineering, arts, and math skills to become young stewards of the planet.
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Want to support OBP Blue Schools?
With your support, Ocean Blue activates kids to save the ocean.
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To learn more about bringing the OBP Blue Schools program to your school, please get in touch with Ocean Blue Project at education@oceanblueproject.org.    Â
Ocean Blue Project is a 501C3 non-profit organization powered through donations.