TOOLKITS

Libraries & Community Groups

Introduction

This toolkit has been created to support individuals working in library and community spaces with a user-friendly approach to facilitating learning experiences about the ocean and waterways in Canada. These learning activities and resources have been curated with your audiences and engagement needs in mind, and with the aim of strengthening our collective understanding of our influence on the ocean and the ocean’s influence on us.

Read and use the Ocean Week Canada key messages to help guide your learning journey.

This toolkit is part of the Ocean Week Canada celebrations but can be used all year long, especially as 2021-2030 is the United Nations Ocean Decade!

LEARN ABOUT THE DECADE

How to use this toolkit

Libraries are amazing community hubs equipped to host community conversations and events. Ocean Week Canada and partners have curated a collection of resources and opportunities for library visitors and community groups to explore. A variety of learning activity formats exist depending on venue capacity and local interests.

Let’s get started!

Ocean School: Immersive Workshops

This bite-sized collection of resources curated by Ocean School is for librarians and community leaders who want to bring the ocean into their space through immersive videos, storytelling, and interactive technologies. This collection allows for the advancement of ocean awareness and literacy in line with Ocean Week Canada and the UN Ocean Decade. Each piece of media comes with an optional activity and can be viewed on a computer or tablet, with VR headsets capabilities for 360° videos and interactives. A station or booth can be set up for visitors to explore independently, or facilitators can play a more active role to conduct short immersive workshops using the workshop guidelines.

BayWatch Workshop

During this interactive experience, visitors explore how changes to certain variables might impact the health of eelgrass in Malpeque Bay, and therefore the survival of other species in the habitat.

Set up a computer or tablet for visitors to explore this interactive on their own, or hold a workshop to guide them through an introduction, investigation, and discussion.

Note: There is a high-tech version of this workshop that can be accessed on the Ocean School website. It can be completed in 40-50 minutes and requires at least 2 VR headsets, a computer, and a projector.

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Where’s Whaledo Workshop

Invite Whaledo, a virtual whale, into your space for visitors to reach out and discover every detail of this mighty mammal in augmented reality, all the way from its blowhole to its flukes! Encourage visitors to take a selfie with Whaledo to share on their social media. Make sure to tag @oceanschoolnow.

Download the Ocean School App and learn how to spawn Whaledo using our Web App guide.

Activity: Set up Whaledo in a large room or outdoors for visitors to take pictures with or choose from a variety of short 10-15 minute workshops to allow them to describe the size and features of a right whale or orca using the workshop guidelines provided.

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Balancing Act

For millennia, the Haíɫzaqv have depended on the seasonal cycles that bring ocean resources to the coast. Every generation learns to harvest in a sustainable way. But now these resources are dwindling. And it’s up to us – all of us – to work together to put things back in balance.

Watch the video

Comic activity: Visitors learn more about c̓isḷa—the act of looking after and taking care of something important. Visitors then create a comic that illustrates people taking care of and giving back to nature.

Note: This activity is part of a full 50-minute learning module where youth host Jordan invites you to his Haíɫzaqv (Heiltsuk) homelands to take part in the harvest.

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Off the Hook Habitats

Take an animated trip from the top to the bottom of the ocean, exploring the factors that make for great aquatic “real-estate”. Combinations of oxygen, sunlight, food, and shelter create different homes for different creatures: from “high-rise” kelp forests to heated “basement apartments” in the hydrothermal zone.

Watch the video

Instagram reflection: Visitors are invited to take screenshots of the animation and create Instagram posts of habitat features using a template in Google Slides. Encourage visitors to use captions that will help them remember the habitat features.

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Sharks are Awesome

Sharks have survived in the ocean for millions of years – from the time of the dinosaurs! Take visitors on a 360° experience of sharks and the adaptations that make them so amazing. Ask visitors “How can we help these awesome creatures face the challenges to come?”

Watch the video

Superhero comic activity: After watching the 360° video, encourage visitors to create a superhero comic of sharks that demonstrates their amazing adaptations. Use the comic template provided, or create a new one on paper or poster board.

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Ocean Collection Booklist – for children

Reading books about the ocean and the creatures that call it home is the perfect way to spark interest about marine and aquatic environments for readers of all ages.

Marie’s Ocean: Marie Tharp Maps the Mountains Under the Sea

Author: Josie James

MarieTharp’s vision and tenacity paved the way for her to become one of the greatest oceanographic cartographers of the 20th century. She was the first person to map the ocean floor and discover the 64374 km (40,000 mile) long Mid-Ocean Ridge and Rift Valley. Her astounding discovery supported the theory of continental drift, which led to the theory of plate tectonics. But it was not an easy road, and Marie struggled to receive the credit she deserved for her discovery.

Publisher: Macmillan Publishers

Photo Credit: Henry Holt/Christy Ottaviano Books

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My Ocean is Blue

Author: Darren LeBeuf

Illustrator: Ashley Barron

The portrayal of a girl with a physical disability enjoying and actively participating in a day at the beach encourages all children to do the same in their own lives, while also offering a character education lesson in adaptability. This book has strong curriculum ties to primary nature units and life science lessons on the ocean and seaside; it offers a perfect focus for nature-based education and outdoor classrooms.

Publisher: Kids Can Press

Photo Credit: From Kids Can Press

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Hello Humpback

Author: Robert Budd

Illustrator: Roy Henry Vickers

This book will delight toddlers as they begin to experience and recognize the sights and sounds of the natural world. Hello Humpback!, a “first words” book, introduces iconic west coast animals, from hungry sea otters to hopping orcas.

Publisher: Harbour Publishing

Photo Credit: From Harbour Publishing

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Fresh Air, Clean Water: Our Right to a Healthy Environment

Author: Megan Clendenan

Illustrator: Julie McLaughlin

Fresh Air, Clean Water explores the connections between our environment and our health, and why the right to live in a healthy environment should be protected as a human right. The book features profiles of children around the world who are taking action and important environmental rights cases. Hear the powerful stories of those fighting for change.

Publisher: Orca Book Publishers

Photo Credit: From Orca Book Publishers

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Diamonds, Hearts & Sea Stars

Author: Janina Rossiter

Diamonds, Hearts & Sea Stars is a picture book about shapes found in the ocean. It is the third book in award-winning and Amazon best-selling author Janina Rossiter’s ‘concept picture book’ series. Janina has again combined two subjects with enchanting hand drawn black ink illustrations on a background of acrylic art (her own paintings). This is a beautiful book that entices young readers to turn the pages as they discover the fascinating underwater world.

Photo Credit: Janina Rossiter artist

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Ocean! Waves for All

Author: Stacy McAnulty

Illustrator: David Litchfield

Ocean! Waves for All is a light-hearted nonfiction picture book about the formation and history of the ocean, told from the perspective of the ocean itself.

Publisher: Henry Holt and Company

(Available in Fr and En)

Photo Credit: Henry Holt and Company

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The Global Ocean

Author: Rochelle Strauss

Illustrator: Natasha Donovan

Though we think of Earth’s five oceans as separate and distinct, they are actually a linked system of circulating water that is one single ocean – the global ocean. Filled with fascinating information, stunning visuals, and plenty of calls to action, readers will be inspired to discover what they can do to help restore Earth’s most important feature, and ultimately, our planet.

Publisher: Kids Can Press

Photo Credit: Natasha Donovan artist

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The Aquanaut

Author: Jill Heinerth

Illustrator: Jamie Kim

A picture book about award-winning aquanaut, Jill Heinerth’s experiences as a female diver, exploring life under the water. This inspiring picture book encourages readers to explore their world, build their self-esteem, and imagine what they can do and become when they grow up.

Publisher: Penguin Random House

Photo Credit: Tundra Books

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Ocean Collection Booklist – for adults

Marine Life Field Guide

Author: Ocean Networks Canada

This second edition field guide is a “living” reference that introduces the deep-sea creatures of the north-east Pacific Ocean. Undersea videos are captured by remotely-operated vehicles (ROVs) diving to almost three kilometres below the ocean surface, where lifeforms thrive in complete darkness. People of all ages who appreciate the vast biodiversity of that reside out of sight in the ocean.

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The Right to Be Cold

Author: Sheila Watt-Cloutier

The Right to Be Cold explores the parallels between safeguarding the Arctic and the survival of Inuit culture. This is a human story of resilience, commitment, and survival told from the unique vantage point of an Inuk woman who, in spite of many obstacles, rose from humble beginnings in the Arctic to become one of the most influential and decorated environmental, cultural, and human rights advocates in the world.

Publisher: Strong Nations Publishing

(Available in Fr and En)

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Not on My Watch: How a renegade whale biologist took on governments and industry to save wild salmon

Author: Alexandra Morton

Alexandra Morton has been called “the Jane Goodall of Canada” because of her passionate thirty-year fight to save British Columbia’s wild salmon. Her account of that fight is both inspiring in its own right and a roadmap of resistance.

Publisher: Penguin Random House Canada

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The Imperilled Ocean: Human Stories from a Changing Sea

Author: Laura Trethewey

Laura Trethewey is an ocean journalist whose first book, the Imperilled Ocean, uses narrative journalism to explore peoples’ diverse relationships with the ocean and reflects on ways for us all, land dwellers and ocean-goers, to care for the ocean.

Publisher: Goose Lane

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Giant Floor Map: Ocean, Freshwater, and Us

Exploring our relationship with Canadian waters

Explore the Map

Did you know all waterways are connected? There’s nothing like following the flow to REALLY wrap your head around this incredible fact! This giant floor map (11m x 8m) is made for walking on, allowing you to understand the ocean and waterways by physically experiencing them! Augmented Reality, 360 video, and other interactive activities will help bring this giant map to life. Ten copies of this giant floor map will travel across the country visiting schools, museums, and other public spaces.

BOOK THE MAP

Ocean-Inspired MakerSpace

The Library Learning Commons is an ideal location for an ocean-inspired community makerspace. Visitors can gather to hypothesize, explore, and experiment to further and deepen their relationship with the ocean.

Makerspace Ocean Toolkit

This OceanToolkit (2nd Edition) has been assembled through collaborative efforts and inspiration of 50+ educators who participated in Taking Making into Classrooms – A Toolkit for Fostering Ocean Knowledge and Stewardship Conference, as well as the contributions of teachers from Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and British Columbia who participated in a summer 2019 Ocean Institute. Users are invited to share this resource, add to it, modify it to suit older/younger grades, or adapt it to extracurricular groups and clubs.

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Crochet Coral Reef by the Institute for Figuring

At a time when living reefs are dying from heat exhaustion and the global ocean is awash in plastic, the Crochet Coral Reef project offers a tender impassioned response. This is a crafty retort to climate change, a one-stitch-at-a-time meditation on the Anthropocene.

To make your own local Satellite Reef please contact the project owner.

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Value and Transformation of Corals (2022)

The Crochet Coral Reef is palpable, polymorphous, terrifying, and inspiring stitchery done with every sort of fiber and strand, looped by tens of thousands of people in dozens of nations, who come together to stitch care, beauty, and response-ability in play tanks. This creative global project is enabled by Margaret and Christine Wertheim’s outrageous, chthonic symbiosis of science, mathematics, art, activism, women’s fiber arts, environmentalism, and sheer love of the critters of planet Earth.

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Makerspace Ocean Toolkit

Crochet Coral Reef by the Institute for Figuring

To make your own local Satellite Reef please contact the project owner.

Value and Transformation of Corals (2022)

The Beautiful Math of Coral

Margaret Wertheim leads a project to re-create the creatures of the coral reefs using a crochet technique invented by a mathematician — celebrating the amazements of the reef, and deep-diving into the hyperbolic geometry underlying coral creation.

LEARN MORE

Films to Screen & Discuss

Help ignite a national/global conversation about what’s happening in Earth’s ocean environments. Host a screening event to celebrate Ocean Week Canada.

Chasing Coral

This 2017 documentary puts the spotlight on coral reef habitats across the planet, from Hawaii to Australia. The story aims to teach viewers how climate change causes major coral bleaching events, which in turn impact the health of human and ocean systems. Viewers walk away with a greater awareness about the ocean ecosystem and its dependence on healthy coral reefs. Rated: PG

Post viewing: Learn more about the impacts on marginalised communities, landlocked areas, and the global economy, and what you can do now to find solutions!

SCREENING GUIDE

My Octopus Teacher

Watch the trailer of this touching tale of interspecies friendship, and examine where humans place ourselves in the natural world. Beautiful underwater cinematography and ocean imagery inspires wonder. To view the full film, Netflix is offering subscribers the opportunity to host educational community screenings free-of-cost.

SCREENING GUIDE

A Plastic Ocean

Plastic Ocean is an epic global adventure following a documentary filmmaker and a world record free-diver as they travel the earth discovering the shocking impact plastic is having on the global ocean and the marine animals that live there. The film investigates how our addiction to plastic is impacting the food chain and how that is affecting every one of us through new and developing human health problems.

Available in 17 languages- see film impact

Photo Credit: The Ocean Agency

SCREENING GUIDE

The Story of Plastic

Plastic pollution is everywhere we look, from city streets to the Arctic ice sheets. Plastic pollution is smothering the global ocean and poisoning communities around the world. We need to chart a different course. The Story of Plastic covers the life cycle of plastic from production to pollution, from refinery to recycling, dismantling the myths of Big Plastic and exposing the human and environmental devastation along the way.

SCREENING GUIDE

Ocean Image Bank by the Ocean Agency

Beautiful and powerful ocean imagery made available by some of the world’s top ocean photographers. These photos are available at no cost to the user to communicate about the ocean, support ocean education, and accelerate conservation efforts. This project is officially endorsed by the UN Ocean Decade.

Photo Credit: The Ocean Agency

CHECK IT OUT

Plastic Free Eco Challenge

Plastic Free Eco Challenge is a month-long effort for all of us to shift away from our single-use plastic dependency and to care for our ecosystems. Together, let’s create a plastic-free world. The challenge is typically launched in July, but can be an event that interested participants enter any month of the year!

TOOLKITS

Libraries & Community Groups

Introduction

How to use this toolkit

Ocean School: Immersive Workshops

BayWatch Workshop

Where’s Whaledo Workshop

Balancing Act

Off the Hook Habitats

Sharks are Awesome

Ocean Collection Booklist – for children

Marie’s Ocean: Marie Tharp Maps the Mountains Under the Sea

Photo Credit: Henry Holt/Christy Ottaviano Books

My Ocean is Blue

Photo Credit: From Kids Can Press

Hello Humpback

Photo Credit: From Harbour Publishing

Fresh Air, Clean Water: Our Right to a Healthy Environment

Photo Credit: From Orca Book Publishers

Diamonds, Hearts & Sea Stars

Photo Credit: Janina Rossiter artist

Ocean! Waves for All

Photo Credit: Henry Holt and Company

The Global Ocean

Photo Credit: Natasha Donovan artist

The Aquanaut

Photo Credit: Tundra Books

Ocean Collection Booklist – for adults

Marine Life Field Guide

The Right to Be Cold

Not on My Watch: How a renegade whale biologist took on governments and industry to save wild salmon

The Imperilled Ocean: Human Stories from a Changing Sea

Giant Floor Map: Ocean, Freshwater, and Us

Exploring our relationship with Canadian waters

Explore the Map

Ocean-Inspired MakerSpace

Makerspace Ocean Toolkit

Crochet Coral Reef by the Institute for Figuring

Value and Transformation of Corals (2022)

Makerspace Ocean Toolkit

Crochet Coral Reef by the Institute for Figuring

Value and Transformation of Corals (2022)

The Beautiful Math of Coral

Films to Screen & Discuss

Chasing Coral

My Octopus Teacher

A Plastic Ocean

Photo Credit: The Ocean Agency

The Story of Plastic

Connect & Share

Ocean Image Bank by the Ocean Agency

Photo Credit: The Ocean Agency

Plastic Free Eco Challenge

Photo Credit: Naja Bertolt Jensen / Ocean Image Bank

Ocean Image Bank by the Ocean Agency

Photo Credit: The Ocean Agency

Plastic Free Eco Challenge

Photo Credit: Naja Bertolt Jensen / Ocean Image Bank

Loop back into other Ocean Week Canada activities