OCEAN LITERACY

"Ocean literacy" is an understanding of the ocean's influence on you and your influence on the ocean. Ocean literacy is composed of 7 essential principles, each of which consists of several fundamental concepts that relate to the principle. The principles and concepts were compiled by the National Geographic Society (NGS) and National Oceanographic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in conjunction with teachers and other educators.

CCMI is proud to be working with the Cayman Islands Government Department of Education in developing an ocean science course based on ocean literacy principles. The idea is to create an educational and fun course through which Cayman Islands school children can learn about the ocean in geographical, oceanographical and biological terms.

The ocean science course consists of a teacher's manual entitled "Our Ocean Planet" for teaching children ocean science along with several other teaching resources. The manual is based on the 7 ocean literacy principles and is freely available for anyone to download and read. In order to help reduce printing costs, we also include a section that describes how people can create their own manual. In addition, there are sections containing teacher training materials and other resources that may be of assistance to teachers.