Theme: Celebrate the sea - Restore the Balance
Seaweek '95 coordinator: Brian Mackness
Explorer Logs
Background
Many of the early sea explorers that came to Australia's coast left diaries of their voyages. These are readily available in libraries.
Aim
- to consider changes in the ocean and coastal environments over time.
Activity
- Research explorers logs and journeys.
- Ask the students to detect any change between what the explorers were describing then and what is there now.
- Discuss the implications of these changes.
Jingle Swells
Aim
- to get people interested in caring for the oceans.
Activity
- Tell the students that they have their own advertising agency and they have just landed the exclusive account from the Australian government to ësellí the idea that humans need to look after the sea.
- Divide the students into advertising account teams and challenge them to write a jingle, magazine, TV or Radio advertisement to get people concerned about the sea, as well as giving them ideas on what they can do to help.
- Teams perform or present the advertising to the whole class.
Ocean Intrigue
Background
There is always a lot of drama happening on the seashore. Wildlife death, mystery pollution, strange acts of nature and so on.
Aim
- to investigate the marine environments with intrigue and imagination.
 Activity
- Challenge students to write a short story about the seashore, using animals as their lead characters. Will it be a love story about a gull and tern? Will it be a detective tale investigating the cause of a hole in a mollusc shell.
Will it be a murder mystery solving where the sea stars have gone? Will it be a science fiction looking at life in 2050?
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Littery Messenger
 Background
Most people don't realise that when they drop litter in the street there is a very real chance of that same rubbish ending up in the ocean or being washed up on the beach after it has taken a quick tour of the stormwater system.
Aim
- to alert others to the land and sea links through rubbish.
Activity
- Prepare students for the dangers of this activity, work in gloves and work safely.
- Take your students on a rubbish collecting trip in the school yard or neighbourhood streets.
- Locate the drains and stormwater system. Determine where that rubbish would have ended up.
- Use some cardboard tubes or boxes from your recycled art supplies to construct a base for a monster.
- With the safe and handable rubbish cloth a litter monster.
- Paint or collage the head and other features to complete a monstrous visage.
- Display the monsters with a message to bring attention to the effect littering can have on the ocean environment and its inhabitants.
Sea Star Tug-o-War
Background
 Sea stars are very strong for their size and mass, in fact twenty times that of a comparable human. They apply steady pressure to the shells of molluscs such as oysters and mussels to open them slightly before turning their stomachs inside out and down into the opening to begin feeding.
Aim
- to include a marine focus in physical education.
Activity
- Try a tug-o-war between two teams of sea stars.
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